i need more information on the poem "To Helen" (written for Mrs. Jane Sith Stanard) for my independent study. So If anyone has any send it my way

Thanks!

Nyx

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2003

Answers

Jane Stanard was the mother of his friend RObert. He gave her all of the affectionate devotion of a son. Whenever he was unhappy at home, he sought her sympathy and always found confort and consolation. Deeply despondent when Jane died insane at the age of 28 in April 1824, he often visited her grave with her son. Jane, "The first, purely ideal love of my soul," inspired Poe's most beautiful elegiac love lyric. Changing Jane to the more Poetic "helen"

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2003

Thomas Mabbott's book on Poe "Complete Poems" is really good for interpretation of this poem with particular refereneces still controversial and vague today. Also at www.eapoe.org see the first version of the poem where Helen is holding a little scroll and not a lamp.

That book is in print. If you need my take on it please feel free to e-mail. This is an early poem and contains one of Poe's few extended similes "like those Nicaean barks..." and most reverence for the classics(due to the influence of Mrs. Stanard and his early school days.)

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2003