I have to analyse or TP-CASTT this poem as soon as possible. Please Help...

-- Anonymous, February 14, 2002

Answers

Or "To Ianthe"(Byron's dedicatory name in "Childe Harold") was published in the short tale "The Visionary"(Assignation) in 1834 as a poem of the Byronesque poet in the same situation as Byron/Chatworth, Poe/Shelton. The last stanza especially is relegated to the tale. The green isle refuge in the sea is a symbol of his love(To Helen, etc.). The beacon brightness and Hope in the future projected from memories of happiness now past are a strong theme for Poe. In this poem the shadow(El Dorado, etc.) the negative wins, the loss of the Past. In that loss he is trapped or rather in the ghostly recollection of dreams, of memories only. The last story stanza exactly details the loss of his love to a rich man overseas from England- and is usually excluded in poem anthologies.

Flowers-Platonic love, fruits- carnal. Green Isle is Avalon style fairyland, separate and supernal and too different from the mortal world. The Voice beckons but the light is dimmed and the poet lies paralysed over his lost past. No more- no more no more is the same repetivie wave to shore lament again common to Poe's stance on the shoreline.

All my days are trances- completely obsessed with mmemory superior to the rough seas of life. Grey eye(Annie Richmond?) ghostly, obscured color, twilight suggestive Dances(Metzengerstein" dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody.

Incredibly musical juxtaposition of light imagery expressing happiness then obscured in sorrow, musical lyricism of hope- and sound imagery: the Voice urging Hope to the grim lament of the eternal shore and the eternal silence of the ghostly dance in dreams.

In its references and use in "The Assignation" it describes a young poet whose lady love(unrequited) is lost to another.

From a short study by Thomas Ollive Mabbott in his book on Poe's poetry and some of my own ideas.

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2002