Need an analysis of Dreamland.... what kind of poem is it, theme and etc, any help would be greatly apprecoately.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2002

Answers

As St. Paul says, "now we see in a glass darkly". In this case Poe comes closest to the Truth or the heart's desire the Eldorado of the beyond in a dream. The color, space, light, map etc. of this dremascape is indeterminate, Ideal, eternal, unchanging while vast and boundless. Try Milton's Paradise Lost, II, 890-896. Poe's dream poems and Ulalume, Fairyland and The Sleeper. The eye cannot make out true form or color only phnatoms.

The refrain has a haunting litl of rhyming couplets embracing the crisper Night, upright. This may figure back to Poe's intial inspiring dreams such as he wrote of in "Dreams" and the source of other fantastic landscapes. "forbid the uplifting of the fringed lid"(obviously a dream vision).

Very original, personal, containing the sense of Poe's haunting by "sheeted memories of the Past" that underlay this awesome vague, oceanic kingdom. But now I am "Out of Space- Out of Time."

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2002