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what was edger allan poe's meaning in the poem spirits of the dead?
-- Anonymous, March 26, 2003
Point of view and event is always important. It is addressed as an argument to a "you" who might be his lost love Elmria Royster. As such it would not be merely a general philosophy of always haunting memories puts us in the company of the dead, but that one cannot forget the person you wronged. As such compare to "The Assignation" story where the secret love of separated lovers bionds them completely if not phyically in past memories. It IS melancholy. Even the stars in that foggy graveyard scene are only "like Hope". The fever of their red light("ULalume") is clinging, mournful and restless. the final stanza bespeaks a frozeness in this shadowy scene(poe's poems and stories on Silence, "The City in the Sea" and "The Valley of Unrest") Poe's landscape of the soul. Even "The Raven" with its oppressive shadow of relentless static memory at the end.
-- Anonymous, March 26, 2003