Know your Poe: Fairy Land

Blogger's note. I think this is going to be my last entry in Know your Poe. And while I haven't covered every single work he wrote in his scant 40 years on earth, you must admit I have bitten off a good chunk. 

I am hardly a Poe scholar, and my mucking around in his work is merely an exploration, but it has been compelling (for me, anyway). What I have noticed, especially in his dense, difficult poetry, is that he often starts off on a positive, even exalted note: but at a certain point, there is a "turn". By the end of the poem the mood is extremely dire, terror-stricken, even hopeless. What happens here, and why?

It is as if Poe does not trust happiness. It will all fall out from underneath him eventually (and here we see why I feel a certain kinship with him and his work). He knows it will end, as surely as life ends. And he does not trust women. They are exalted to the point of appearing supernatural, or at least supernaturally beautiful. He sits beside them and woos them. He does not have sex with them. Now surely, he must have had sex with someone, because it's the rare person who doesn't. A lot of these types who exalted women went to prostitutes for fulfillment (Beethoven comes to mind: and it gave me a thrill of shock to realize that Poe was born while Beethoven was in his heyday. They walked the earth at the same time, though Beethoven managed his self-pity much better.)

I wasn't sure whether to post this only with illustrations (subconscious images, in case anyone wonders why I don't do "line about a rose" (picture of rose); "line about eyes" (picture of eyes). This sort of approach makes me yip and scream with its unimaginitiveness.) But I have things to say about this, and I need to interject. So I will have to run it twice. Hoo-ha. 

FAIRY LAND.

————

Sit down beside me, Isabel,

Here, dearest, where the moonbeam fell

Just now so fairy-like and well.

Now thou art dress’d for paradise!

I am star-stricken with thine eyes!

My soul is lolling on thy sighs!

Thy hair is lifted by the moon

Like flowers by the low breath of June!

Sit down, sit down — how came we here?

Or is it all but a dream, my dear?

You know that most enormous flower —

That rose — that what d’ye call it — that hung

Up like a dog-star in this bower —

To-day (the wind blew, and) it swung

So impudently in my face,

So like a thing alive you know,

I tore it from its pride of place

And shook it into pieces — so

Be all ingratitude requited.

The winds ran off with it delighted,

And, thro’ the opening left, as soon

As she threw off her cloak, yon moon

Has sent a ray down with a tune.

And this ray is a fairy ray —

Did you not say so, Isabel?

How fantastically it fell

With a spiral twist and a swell,

And over the wet grass rippled away

With a tinkling like a bell!

In my own country all the way

We can discover a moon ray

Which thro’ some tatter’d curtain pries

Into the darkness of a room,

Is by (the very source of gloom)

The motes, and dust, and flies,

On which it trembles and lies

Like joy upon sorrow! ­

O, when will come the morrow?

Isabel! do you not fear

The night and the wonders here?

Dim vales! and shadowy floods!

And cloudy-looking woods

Whose forms we can’t discover

For the tears that drip all over!

Huge moons — see! wax and wane

Again — again — again —

Every moment of the night —

Forever changing places!

How they put out the starlight

With the breath from their pale faces!

Lo! one is coming down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence!

Down — still down — and down —

Now deep shall be — O deep!

The passion of our sleep!

For that wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Drowsily over halls — ­

Over ruin’d walls —

Over waterfalls,

(Silent waterfalls!)

O’re the strange woods — o’er the sea —

Alas! over the sea!

FAIRY LAND.

————

Sit down beside me, Isabel,

Here, dearest, where the moonbeam fell

Just now so fairy-like and well.

So what's the mood here? Warm, inviting, certainly comfortable, with a romantic mention of moonbeams - in fact, she's sitting on the moonbeam, an odd thing. 

Now thou art dress’d for paradise!

I am star-stricken with thine eyes!

My soul is lolling on thy sighs!

Poe uses words like "lolling" and "gloating" as a sort of onomatopoeia (though I am not sure how gloating works - and yet, it does). This is sensuous, even sexual language, as if he's swooning at her feet. Almost.

Thy hair is lifted by the moon

Like flowers by the low breath of June!

Sit down, sit down — how came we here?

Or is it all but a dream, my dear?

Oh-oh, we have our first indication that all this pleasure isn't real.

You know that most enormous flower —

That rose — that what d’ye call it — that hung

Up like a dog-star in this bower —

To-day (the wind blew, and) it swung ­

So impudently in my face,

So like a thing alive you know,

I tore it from its pride of place

And shook it into pieces — so

Be all ingratitude requited.

The winds ran off with it delighted,

And, thro’ the opening left, as soon

As she threw off her cloak, yon moon

Has sent a ray down with a tune.

I just don't know where to begin here, it's so brilliant and strange. The "what d'ye call it" shouldn't work at all, but does, in establishing a sort of naturalness. The dog-star is the strangest thing I've ever heard - a rose that looks like a star? Now the rose is in his face, literally, and he grabs it "from its pride of place" (Poe had a thing about status) and tears it to pieces, not exactly a romantic or friendly gesture. Why does he do this? "Be all ingratitude requited" - what's that all about? The rose is ungrateful, is it - or is he? Or is Isabal? (I could stay here all day, especially in light of the symbolism of rose as female genitalia.)

And this ray is a fairy ray —

Did you not say so, Isabel?

How fantastically it fell

With a spiral twist and a swell,

And over the wet grass rippled away

With a tinkling like a bell!

Be prepared for the "turn". Fairyland lasts but a moment. And let's not ask about that "swell".

In my own country all the way

We can discover a moon ray

Which thro’ some tatter’d curtain pries

Into the darkness of a room,

Is by (the very source of gloom)

The motes, and dust, and flies,

On which it trembles and lies

Like joy upon sorrow! ­

O, when will come the morrow?

Eddy, don't go there! But he has already gone. "In my own country" surely refers to more than the United States of Poetry. He means HIS psychic landscape, his place of doom. The moonbeam has exposed all the ugliness that lurks in his soul, darkness and crawling things. He already wants it to be tomorrow, so where has gone the joy?

Isabel! do you not fear

The night and the wonders here?

Dim vales! and shadowy floods!

And cloudy-looking woods

Whose forms we can’t discover

For the tears that drip all over!

Genius is something that makes us smack ourselves on the forehead and exclaim, "Why didn't *I* think of that? " (Because you're not a genius, is why, but that's the form it takes.) It's also something so deceptively simple, it's as if anyone COULD think if it, but somehow didn't. Moreover, it is as if it has always been there. "Dim vales! and shadowy floods!/And cloudy-looking woods" - not "cloudy", but "cloudy-LOOKING", as if seen through a fogged-up windowpane, fogged up by, perhaps, someone's desperate breath. "For the tears that drip all over" is candlewax (a candle that sheds light only for a brief while, then consumes itself with flame and dies?), the melting of hope, uncontainable sorrow, pitiless rain and its drippy aftermath - I could go on and on, but he does it in a few words. Damn.

Huge moons — see! wax and wane

Again — again — again —

Every moment of the night —

Forever changing places!

How they put out the starlight

With the breath from their pale faces!

Poe knows how to use repetition, sometimes to an outrageous degree. From the raven's relentless "nevermore" to the "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells," he not only gets away with it, he haunts us, grabs us, shakes us with it. This moon is, to say the least, not the lovely shining silver thing we see every night, but some inexplicaby multiple, ghastly phantom that changes shape and location, waxing and waning bizarrely as if in time-lapse photography. These "huge moons" even have the capacity to blow out and extinguish the stars like so many birthday candles.

Lo! one is coming down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence!

Down — still down — and down —

Now deep shall be — O deep!

The passion of our sleep!

For that wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Drowsily over halls — ­[page 58:]

Over ruin’d walls —

Over waterfalls,

(Silent waterfalls!)

O’re the strange woods — o’er the sea —

Alas! over the sea!

Why does it end this way, on a note of terror, even hysteria? This horrible moon, personified into some creepy animate being (and just "one" is coming down, so what about all the rest?) is settling over everything like a suffocating blanket. Thus everything is ruined, waterfalls dried up, the "strange" woods stilled, and - at last - the sea itself conquered. And those eerily erotic, narcotic lines about sleep: "Down - still down - and down - /Now deep shall be - O deep! The passion of our sleep!"

You could spend a month squeezing this, and not get it all. Was Poe as afraid of sleep as death itself? Was he just a scaredy-cat, having strange visions in the woods? Had he gotten into the laudanum again (though the Poe Society site keeps insisting he didn't use it)? It has a hallucinogenic, almost insane quality, describing not just a menacing moon but mutiples of ghastly, ghostly, animated phantoms, sending a lunar ambassador down to expose his inner ugliness as well as suffocate and conquer everything.

Was Poe writing about "lunacy" then? And what about poor Isabel? Whatever happened to her? She must have run screaming at some point. Talk about a lousy date.

OK, the moon. . . women's sexuality. . . waxing and waning. . .the menstrual cycle (which he may have barely known about). . .something you howl at. . . something lovers stroll under. . .something that makes you insane (oh-oh, it's a full moon tonight) - OK, I give up, Poe, you've thrown us a good one this time, and beautiful as it is, I have to confess I don't understand it at all.

ADDENDA.

A little more information about the "dog-star", verse 2, line 3:

Sir·i·us  [sir-ee-uhs] noun

1. Astronomy . the Dog Star, the brightest-appearing star in the heavens, located in the constellation Canis Major.

2. Also, Seirios. Classical Mythology  a)  the dog of Orion.

    b) Icarus' faithful dog, who was changed into a star.

Origin: 1325–75; Middle English, Latin Sīrius; Greek Seírios

It is a binary star whose companion, Sirius B, is a very faint white dwarf. 

So now we are off again! Faithful dog; that which "dogs" you and won't let you go; Icarus, whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun (the tears that drip all over!). . . and on and on. . .and of course, the obvious play on "serious'. . . Interesting that the dog-star has a twin, so that its brightness is something of a cheat.

The name Isabel,a variation of Elizabeth, means "God is my oath".

And I can't resist this - I took another look at that title and thought, "Fairy Land - Sirius-ly?"

Badda-boom.

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Know your Poe: The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore –

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door –

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door –

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you" – here I opened wide the door; –

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" –

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –

'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore –

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door –

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –

Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before –

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never – nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –

On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –

Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil – prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting –

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted – nevermore!

THE AFTERMATH. Never explain yourself! says the poet. All right then, I will. My dalliance with Poe is a shallow thing, and who knows if it will go anywhere. I certainly will NOT be writing any books about him. I have found a superb site hosted by the Poe Society of Baltimore, and I hope to slosh around in it in the coming days. It has simply everything - remarkably complete, even down to what his voice sounded like ("melodious", as poets' voices were often described, with a touch of Southern accent, the kind we hear in the polished and well-moneyed.  And in spite of dire poverty, he always affected a slightly shabby gentility.)

But this is my Poe moment. Having strung together a crazy assortment of subconscious images (and some people are SO annoyed at the lack of one-on-one or sequential significance to these, as I prefer to dredge them up from the depths of the Land of Bye-Bye), some of them taken from a weird old cartoon called Inky and the Minah Bird in which a mournful black bird trudges along, with an occasional hop-step, to  Mendelssohn's lugubrious Fingal's Cave - having done all that - yes, done all that - well - well - I bought a cask of amontillado, and. . . and. . .

Actually, I went for a walk. Sasamat Lake, a gorgeous place where I love walking, because the winding trail is bang up against the shore, so close you can dip your toe in. There's a white sand beach, and breeze, and many geese with goslings (we counted 18 babies last time, and by now they were almost as big as chickens and looking weirdly ostrichlike). We were delighted to see them promenade again, the adults with stiff necks and nodding heads which seemed to say, eloquently, "Bugger off, you humans, you're bothering me."

But it wasn't that.

Wasn't. That. At all.

When we arrived, just as we walked toward the white sands, we heard a - squawk.

An - AWWKK.

An - AWWWHHKKK!

This was a primal, even prehistoric sound, and soon it was joined by another voice even more evil and squawky, and then a third, and a fourth, and - God, how many were there?

"Ravens," I said to Bill. "It's ravens, and they're completely insane."

These ravens, at least four of them, or perhaps five or six, or even more, were not happy campers. The croaky squawks just escalated in frequency and volume until I thought I was in a Hitchcock movie. The resonance of their croaky Nevermore-ish throats just richochets and bounces off trees and rocks, and other ravens. This couldn't have been a good situation. Were they defending their territory? Nesting? Just plain pissed off?  I could see them wheeling in the sky, looking vaguely vulturelike above the treetops, while some of them hunched blackly in the branches.

The squawking and awwhhk-ing went on and on, until we outwalked it on the trail. Still there was an echo behind us, crows on steroids, murderous birds whose deep-throated squawks made cawing seem melodious.  I had the thought: a murder of crows, yes, but ravens - ?*  (See footnote - at the foot, idiot!).

At any rate, in light of my Poe-ish mood, it did seem like serendipity, or at least synchronicity, if only of a darkish shade.

I have not had time nor energy to analyze The Raven - God, what an undertaking, if I may use such an expression! And I hear there are Poe scholars who make it their life's work to sift out the meaning of all this macabre stuff. But I did notice some dark humor in it, lines that others don't seem to have noticed (humor? In Poe?).

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –

'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

To me, this verse, if not ALL the verses, has the feeling of a black ditty, a rhyme and rhythm scheme that is almost fun. "Surely THAT is. . . at my window LATT-ice. . . what there-AT is. . ." He's funnin' us here, and he knows it. It sounds like a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan, perhaps "I am the very model of a modern Major-General". 

And thinking the bird's name is Nevermore - why, that's nothing but an early version of "who's on second, what's on third"!

Surely Poe was one of the strangest men, who wrote one of the strangest poems, at the strangest time. For The Raven, which ran in an American newspaper, he was paid $17.00, not enough to keep him in amontillado for a week. Sometimes he was destitute enough to break up and burn his chairs for warmth in the winter - can't you see it? Poe always having to stand up? No wonder he looked so desperate!

But for him, this crow on steroids is an appropriate companion. The ideal Poe pet.  AWKKKKHH!

*Collective nouns for the corvids varies. 

A parliament of ravens is a reference to the robes the members of British parliament wear. 

An unkindness of ravens is another collective used because the birds are known to taunt and torment other predators. They will work together to steal prey and drive off raptors or dogs in the raven's territory. As in Poe's poem, ravens have an ominous image

A constable of ravens is what the roosting birds that live in the Tower of London are called. 

A conspiracy of ravens refers to their low rough group muttering. Ravens have a range of vocalizations that sound like undecipherable talk. 

(To that, I have nothing to add.)

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Know Your Poe: The Happiest Day

The Happiest Day

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;
But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day–the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? DIDN'T you? - that I would ever run a series about Edgar Allan Poe? No, I was deadly serious, as serious (and deadly) as I could be about such a topic.

I don't know all of his poetry, and to dip into it is difficult, for it's melancholy and dense and written in that Victorian way, full of morbid verbal bric-a-brac and swirling emotional effluvia. So I cast around for something a bit lighter. Ah! This must be it, The Happiest Day! Even a morose bugger like Poe must have had a little fun, even though it's said he never had sex with his wife, and perhaps not with anyone. Maybe he liked to play canasta or enjoyed chilled melon balls or something, I don't know. But when I found this poem and realized it was relatively short, I thought, aha, here's one I can analyze line-by-line without busting my brain or bursting into tears.

Wrong. This guy just never lightens up.

Analyzing poetry is an awful thing, really, because it should mean exactly what it means to the reader. If it's really good, the poem reads you. It pulls uncomfortable stuff out of you, the stuff we shove aside in order to get through the day and deal with its noise and tussle. Whilst all this slimy stuff lurks beneath.

So I will let this poem read me. It seems to be saying - and here I am reminded of Oscar Levant's statement, "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember" - that what we call happiness is so evanescent that it melts and evaporates even as we experience it. The poet, who was maybe 22 when he wrote this, feels his life has already peaked and it's all a downward slide from here on in (though little did he know he'd only make it to forty).

It's a short poem, after all, certainly short for for Poe - but he packs a lot into it, or rather sneaks it in. Two weighty words repeat almost as alarmingly as those infernal "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells": "pride" and "power":

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Is the poet in some sort of disgrace here? Or has he missed out on something? "The highest hope of pride and power" - this isn't about happiness at all, but about position, worldly position! Loftiness, almost. And because he fell off his high horse, he's whimpering about it: "sear'd and blighted" seems to imply some sort of assault from the outside, a burn, a rotting on the vine, which is a vastly different thing from internally-generated grief.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

Here we get a clue. We get a clue what this guy is really all about, what turns his crank. What he dreamed about as a youth. What he hoped for. Longed for. And it ain't a pretty picture. He argues with himself for a moment, as if somewhat incredulous: Power? Are you sure that's what did it for me? Then (after using the almost supernatural term "vanished" to describe the loss) he dismisses the whole thing, though there are several more stanzas to come.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

Now here's a mysterious couple of lines: "Another brow may even inherit/The venom thou hast pour'd on me". Who is this "other", and is "inherit" to be taken literally? And how can pride - whom I assume he is addressing rhetorically - pour venom on someone? Or perhaps it's the loss of pride?  Again, it's the external assault, the snakebite from the bluff. "Be still, my spirit!" may not have been quite as histrionic then as now, but it's still an obvious play for sympathy.

The happiest day–the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

"The brightest glance of pride and power" - but now we begin to see the vanity at the core. Bright glances, ah, those too must come from the outside - glances of approval, we must assume. Or is the "glance of pride and power" really his own? I can't figure this man out! Whichever it is, it's revealing that this is the thing that made him happiest - a happiness he is certain will never come again.

Or does he not deserve to be happy?

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

Now is he really telling us here that, given the chance to relive it,  he would turn away the brightest moment of his life? Is this sour grapes - who needs this shit, anyway? - or is he so far into his own self-pity that he actively chooses pain over pleasure?  I'd murder the guy, if he weren't already dead.

But he's not saying that at all.  He is saying "the HOPE of pride and power" - and a hope isn't the same thing at all, it's just a desire, unfulfilled. Something that was never real to begin with. A fantasy. 

And then he tells us - if I'm digging anything real out of this at all - he tells us he wouldn't want to experience that hope again because he KNOWS it would be followed by some awful, shot-sparrow, plummeting despair. This is some sort of definition of soul-destroying melancholia.

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

I can't help but feel, as this densely-written, enigmatic thing comes to a screeching close, that it's really about the old Biblical warning, "Pride goeth before a fall". Certainly the image of the falling bird (or bat? Ewwwww!) seems to imply that all his lusting and yearning for power and approval will eventually bring about his downfall. I don't quite get the "alloy", which is a sort of metallic reference that does not fit with shot sparrows or ravens or whatever-it-is (though it is a dandy rhyme with "destroy"). Alloy seems to indicate two elements fusing together. Pride and power? Poe and status, perhaps literary status? Is this alloy the "essence" which is so powerful (oops, that's ironic - power IS the problem) to destroy? It's unclear if the alloy is an external element this time, or something inextricably bound up with his own heart. Which would mean that the poet has, in contemporary terms, sold out. 

But the kicker is that last line. "A soul that knew it well" - knew what, the shallowness of power trips and pride, of drawing-room debate over which poet has scored the most literary Brownie points (or pale waxen virgins gently expiring on velvet divans)? Has he been playing worldly games all along, and being utterly seduced by them? Is he afraid to re-enter the Eden of his youth, because he knows damned well he'll just be thrown out of there again?

Oh, not another original sin poem! Anything but that!

POST-BLOG NOTE. I was amazed but not surprised, in trying to find tasty images of Poe, that I kept coming up with pictures of John Astin, the actor who portrayed Gomez Addams in The Addams Family. It seems he has played Poe on the Broadway stage, and my goodness, they wouldn't need to put much makeup on him! He's a dead ringer for the man (except too jolly by half).  I think Astin must be, oh, God in heaven, 80 years old by now if he's still around, and Poe croaked (so to speak) at 40, so it must have been a long time ago.  I will do more research on this fascinating topic once I've had some sleep.
Sleeeeeeeeeeep. . . . . . . .)

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