What is Poe " evening star is about?

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2000

Answers

Lingber,

This is a repeat of a response in another thread I posted earlier.

The poem "Evening Star" was first published in his volume "Tamerlane and Other Poems" in 1827 when Poe was but 18 years old. Some of the poems included in the volume were said to have been written as early as the age of 14. While we cannot know this for sure, many of the poems in this volume reflect an idealistic nature bursting with boyhood passions and tempered only by youthful naivete. It is my understanding this poem was not published again during his life time, but I cannot support this assumption.

It appears to be an expression of the poet's idealistic measure of himself or his young life with the light-giving beauty of celestial bodies, specifically, the moon and the Evening Star. He refers to the coldness of the light of the moon and turns from it to the warmth he feels from the evening star that is more closely analogous to his young heart and youthful passions than... "Than that colder, lowly light."

Regards,

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2000