Title:  Love is a beautiful thing

                ---Reflection about Edgar Allen Poe’s poem To Helen

Abstract: most poets like through writing love poem to express their love to their beloved. As a poet and short-story writer, he wrote about the feelings he experienced, expressed in images born in his haunted mind. A passion for beauty, as well as deeprooted fears of death and murder and insanity are communicated in images of angels and decaying palaces and pallid moonlight and gaping tombs. To Helen is a beautiful lyric poetry. It represents one-for-one’s romantic love.

Keywords: love  petry  feeling  express

Outline:

1.     The general information about Edgar Allen Poe

2.     Different people have different feelings when they read a poem.

3.     Analysis of To Helen

4.     Compared To Helen with Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose

5.     My reflection about people’s love

Body:

Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson called him the jingle man; Mark Twain said that his prose was unreadable, and Henry James felt that a taste for his work was the mark of a second-rate sensibility. According to T. S. Eliot, "the forms which his lively curiosity takes are those in which a preadolescent mentality delights." After notices like those, most reputations would be sunk without a trace, and yet Edgar Allan Poe shows no sign whatsoever of loosening his extraordinary hold on our imaginations. Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second of the three children. He was very good at writing poems and wrote many good poems, such as The Raven, To Helen and Israfel.

Different people have different feelings when they read a poem. The readers maybe change their mind through the writer’s feeling he wants to express. A good lyric poetry can make the reader completely absorbed in its poetry context. Love is a topic for us no matter when we live. In Poe’s poetry, we can felt deeply that his poem had periodical feeling. To Helen, the pattern of this poem is like Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose. It is also a lyric poem. Both of them are written for be loved woman.

In the first stanza, Helen’ beauty is soothing. It provides security and safety. Perhaps the reader is expected to associate Marlow’ famous line: “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” to Helen’ beauty, for her beauty is as hypnotic for the speaker as were the ships that transported another wanderer----Ulysses---home from Troy. Throughout the poem, Poe uses allusions to classical names and places, as well as certain kinds of images to create the impressions of a far-off idealized, unreal woman are “hyacinth” and “classic”(line7), “Naiad airs”(line8), and “statue—like”(line12). Helen stands, not like a real woman, but like a saint in a “window—niche”(line11). She becomes a symbol both of beauty and of frustration, a romantically idealized, yet inaccessible image of the heart’s desire.

To Helen, here Helen is one of Poe’s most famous lyric poetry’s main roles. The name inspired by Mrs. Jane Stith Standard, the mother of a schoolmate of Poe, in Richmond, Virginia. Poe described the poem, as “lines written in my passionate boyhood, to the first, purely love of my soul.” The Helen of Greek myth was the beautiful daughter of Zeus. Her abduction by Paris was the cause of the Trojan War and the source of the Iliad of Homer.

Helen, thy beauty is to me

   Likethose Nicéan barks of yore

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

   The weary, way—worn wanderer bore

   To his own native shore.

In this stanza, we can see a French word Nicéan.The word means “victorious.” Poe ‘s meaning is very unclear. He may have intended reference to the ancient city of Nicea (or Nicaea), in Turkey, which was associated with the god Dionysus, a wanderer. Although a multitude of different interpretations has been put forward, all agree on the musical quality of the term and its implications of classical antiquity. The word “barks”, in fact, means boats.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

   Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

   To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Hyacinth, the word suggests the bluish color reflected from black hair. The Naiads, in Greek mythology, are beautiful maidens living in fountains and rivers. The writer wrote these maidens are invited him to their home.

Lo! in yon brilliant window—niche

  How statue—like I see thee stand,

  The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

   Are Holy—Land!

In the final stanza, here agate is a thing that is made from bluish-gray translucent stone. The Psyche, in Greek mythology, is a mortal maiden who was viewed as the personification of Soul and Inspiration.

When we finish reading this poem, we can feel that the writer just want to express his feeling for the Helen. Actually, I don’t appreciate the poetry very much. In the poetry, the poet uses many women’s names to express his love. He hoped that his beloved could have the virtues of these maidens in Greek mythology. So he wrote Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. From the bottom of our heart, we hope that we can find our “White Prince” and “White Beauty”s. They all exist in our imaginations. In the daily life, real “White Prince” and “White Beauty” don’t exist. We just find one who loves you and understands you. He can love you and your family, helps you with anything you can’t do it well. He may be your friend in your work and your partner in your life. Compared with To Helen, we preferred Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose. Burns is a popular Scottish peasant poet. Inspirited by the lives and loves of rural people, he wrote many poems of progress and democracy. Of his poems of emotion there is an immense number showing the beauty of nature, the simplicity, honesty and friendship of te rural people, and drama of their love affairs. In the poem, he wrote: “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June: O my Luve’s like the melodie, That’s sweetly play’d in tune. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my Dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; And I will luve thee still, my Dear, While the sands o’life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only Luve, And fare thee well, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho’it were ten thousand mile!” Here Burns uses direct way to express his love feeling, but the effect is very good, we can feel that it is a love poem, and through these words, we can feel love is a beautiful thing.

For Poe’s To Helen, I read it several times. In the poem, I preferred the first stanza. It directly expresses the writer’s love to Helen. This is the feeling from the bottom of our heart. People say that love is a romantic thing in the world. Poe’s lyric poetry is a typical example. Poet can write poem to express his feelings, playwright can write drama or play to make an unreal romantic love. What about us? For ordinary people, how can we express our feelings to our loved? Especially in the popular society, we should shout out our love directly or indirectly? As a matter of fact, I really don’t know. It is difficult for shy people to say loudly their love to their loved. Maybe we can learn those ancient poets to write some love poems for their love. There are varieties of ways to express love. I feel that the old way of expressing love is still very fashionable and reasonable. 

References:

1.      An Introduction To American Literature From Newcomers To Naturalists                By Fred Mednick:  河南大学出版社

2.      A Short History Of English Literature(New Revised Edition) 刘炳善 编著     河南人民出版社

3.      Selected Readings In American Literature(上册) 李宜燮 常耀信 主编       南开大学出版社

4.      Survey Of Britain & America (上)张奎武 主编   吉林科学技术出版社