6. Lightning. As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamored moon While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, And they say (the starry choir Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings- But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty- Therefore, thou art not wrong, Best bard, because the wisest! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit- With the fervor of thy lute- Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; 7. Classic myth saw this constellation as seven sisters, one lost or hidden. 8. A nymph of the Mohammedan paradise. 9. Poe traced the inspiration of this lyric to "the first purely ideal love of my soul," Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, a young Richmond neighbor, who died in 1824. Poe approved Lowell's statement that he wrote the first draft a year earlier, at fourteen. It was rigorously revised; the personal element is almost wholly sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of pure beauty in art. 1. No wholly convincing identification has been made. Perhaps Poe used this word merely because it is musical and suggestive. All guesses have suggested Mediterranean and classical associations, referring to cultural pilgrimages of Catullus, Bacchus, or Ulysses, thus conforming to the sense of the following three lines. The conjectures, with supporting references, are summarized in Campbell (Poems, p. 201); the Catullus theory is added by J. J. Jones in "Poe's 'Nicéan Barks'" (American Literature, II, 1931, 433-438). 5 ΤΟ 15 1831, 1845 2. In "Ligeia" (below), Poe associates "the Homeric epithet, 'hyacinthine" " with "raven-black *** and naturallycurling tresses"; in another story, "The Assignation," a girl's hair resembles the "clustered curls" of "the young hyacinth"; and in classic myth, the flower preserved the memory of Apollo's love for the dead young Hyacinthus. Cf. the following phrase, "thy classic face." 3. The naiads of classical myth were nymphs associated with fresh water (lakes, rivers, fountains). Cf. "desperate seas," above. 4. Compare these perfect lines with those of the first version (Poems, 1831): "To the beauty of fair Greece, / And the grandeur of old Rome." 5. Byron's early influence has been perceived in these three lines (Campbell, Poems, p. 203); but it has not been recalled that Byron once emulated Leander, the legendary Greek lover, who nightly swam the Hellespont, guided to The City in the Sea Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Around, by lifting winds forgot, No rays from the holy heaven come down So blend the turrets and shadows there Hero's arms by her lamp, aloft on a 6. The meanings of this poem are emphasized by its earlier titles: "The Doomed City" (1831); "The City of Sin" 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 30 35 (1836). Parallels with Byron and Shelley are noted by Campbell (Poems, p. 208), but observe the prevalence, in Poe's poems and tales, of the theme of the dominion of evil, 7. Babylon, in Biblical literature, is the symbol of the wicked city doomed. See, for example, Revelation xvi: 18-19; and Isaiah xiv. For no ripples curl, alas! Along that wilderness of glass- No heavings hint that winds have been But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave-there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, The hours are breathing faint and low— 40 45 50 1831, 1845 The Coliseum3 Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie), Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee1 8. This appeared, with many minor al- 9. Jesus Christ. Gethsemane (1. 14) was the scene of his agony and arrest. Cf. Matthew xxvi: 36. 1. The fabled astrologers of antiquity. Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair But stay! these walls-these ivy-clad arcades— These mouldering plinths-these sad and blackened shafts- By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? "not all! "Not all"-the Echoes answer me We rule the hearts of mightiest men-we rule To One in Paradise1 Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 2. The image of an eagle in bronze was 3. Slain son of the Dawn, or Aurora; his statue on the Nile was said to re 20 25 30 35 40 45 1833, 1845 spond with harp music at the first light of every dawn. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XIII, following 1. 622; Pausanias, I, 42, Section 2. 4. Poe's fondness for this dirge, which |