Quoth The Raven - Poe Poetry Blog

Illustrations for “ Lenore ” by Henry Sandham , 1886. Harvard University. Edgar Allan Poe declared that “ The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world .” [i]   It is also, without question, the one which, in his poems, he spent the most time on.   In poems such as “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “Lenore,” and “Ulalume,” Poe repeatedly revisits the theme of bereavement over a dead lover. Although Poe wrote poems with this theme even before his wife Virginia passed away in 1847, it is clear that she is the protagonist in these poems—sometimes, in an anticipatory way, as his mourning her began even before her passing. He famously described the ordeal in a letter , writing that, during her long illness, “ I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity .”   When Virginia finally succumbed, the subject was so painful that Poe’s, perhaps, earliest attempt to write a poem about his grief over her death resulted only in an abortive, but hea

Frankenstein was a Gothic cautionary tale against the excesses of science. Much has been written already (e.g.: here , here and here ) about Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet—To Science” (1829), in which Poe laments the advent of the scientific era, with its “ dull realities ,” threatening to wipe out the Romanticism of human imagination, dreams, mythology and even to eradicate “ the poet ” (Poe)’s private “ dream ” by unmasking all the mysteries of life. Here is the entire poem, one of only three sonnets known to have been inked by he-of-the-Gothic-inclinations.   The other two are “Sonnet—To Zante” (1837) and “To My Mother” (1849).   I have divided the fourteen lines to demarcate the three quatrains and closing couplet, for ease of reference. Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!  Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.  Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,  Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,