*Please note that everything that is in bold are my notes and thoughts! I do have a paragraph at the end that brings in some of my back ground on Poe so if some of my notes sound like they can’t be backed up, maybe they can make more sense after the last paragraph is read!

 

Eldorado

by Edgar Allan Poe

(published 1849)

GAILY bedight,

Bedight is defined as adorned.

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old —

This knight so bold —

And o’er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

The shadow that is spoken of here could elude to a darkness that came over the knight as many of Edgar Allen Poe’s characters have gone mad searching for something or keeping something hidden or at bay (as can be seen in the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Read Death”).

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow —

“Shadow,” said he,

“Where can it be —

This land of Eldorado?”

So, here, I think the shadow is not a person that he can’t see, but a phantom of some sort, as Edgar Allen Poe always has phantom, ghosts, etc. in his works as well.

“Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

(Impossible)

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

(I think this eludes to the Valley of the Shadow of Death)

Ride, boldly ride,”

The shade replied, —

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

(So, I think that this pretty much means that you have to be dead in order to find El Dorado which makes a lot of sense. El Dorado is always seen as a symbolism of Heaven (we saw that in Candide). It is also a place that can’t be found which makes sense as to why 1) the knight hasn’t found it in all his searching and why 2) no one knows where it is. Also, as you can see, the knight is already dying. This is why the Shadow is being really encouraging to “Ride, Boldly Ride”… I saw this as a way for the Shadow to say “don’t be afraid of death”.)

This is where I found the poem:

http://poestories.com/read/eldorado

——————————————————————————————————————–

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

“Many and many a year ago” obviously implies that the woman is dead. This is not surprising because Edgar Allen Poe often writes about dead women, women dying, or women who are resurrected.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

…So the angels wanted the kind of love they had?…

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So she got sick and died… like his mom… and wife in real life…****

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

A sepulcher (the word was misspelled… or was it written like that on purpose?…) is defined as: a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

Okay, rude. So the angles “kill” her… or at least that’s what he’s blaming it on…

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

I thought the dreams alluded to him seeing her ghost… which is totally possible if he’s sleeping next to her tomb every night… very concerning…

I got this poem on:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151

****To bring some back story to Edgar Allen Poe, his life, and how it influenced his writing, he grew up without a father really present in his life. His mother was an actress and every night Edgar Allen Poe would watch his mom die. (She acted as Juliet in the play… Romeo and Juliet…). This was very traumatizing for him when he was younger but he eventually saw this so many times that he began to believe that every time his mother would die, she would come back to life. So, when his mother really did die (he was a big kid, not yet a teen, I don’t think) of tuberculosis, he was traumatized that she didn’t come back to life. To make matters worse, his wife (who was also closely related to him by the way) died of the same illness that took his mother. They both died very young (both in our standards and the standards of the 1800s.) The death of the two most important women in his life has greatly influenced his writing. He always writes about women dying or being dead and he writes about death in general. There were other things that influenced his writing of course (like the fact that he was an alcoholic, served in the military, and that he lived in the south for some time), but his mother and wife were instrumental to the writings that we know about today. Another is The Masque of the Read Death. This is a short story that personifies death and so many people who tried to be cautious were the ones to die. This is seen in the short story where they lock every important person in the castle grounds but death finds everyone any way.