THE SLEEPER (Page 11)
Published as "Irene" in 1831 and 1836, and as "The Sleeper" in 1843
and 1845. The theme is Poe's favorite, the death of a beautiful young
woman, and the poem is remarkable, even among Poe's, for its melody.
LENORE (Page 13)
Published as "A P?¦an" in 1831 and 1836, and as "Lenore" in 1843 and
1845. It was much altered in its numerous revisions.
1. broken is the golden bowl. See Ecclesiastes xii. 6.
2. Stygian river. The Styx was a river of Hades, across which
the souls of the dead had to be ferried.
3. Guy De Vere: the mourning lover. It is he who speaks in the
second and fourth stanzas.
13. Peccavimus: literally, "we have sinned." This stanza is the
reply of the false friends.
THE VALLEY OF UNREST (Page 14)
Published in 1831 as "The Valley Nis," with an obscure allusion to a
"Syriac Tale":
Something about Satan's dart--
Something about angel wings--
Much about a broken heart--
All about unhappy things:
But "the Valley Nis" at best
Means "the Valley of Unrest."
Later it was published in magazines and in the 1845 edition, revised
and improved, and transformed into a simple landscape picture,--one of
the strange, weird, unearthly landscapes so characteristic of Poe.
THE COLISEUM (Page 15)
This poem was submitted in the prize contest in Baltimore in 1833, and
would have been successful but for the fact that the author's story,
"The Manuscript Found in a Bottle," had taken the first prize in its
class.
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