Can anyone give me a analyis of this poem? I need to know what the poem is about and what is happening in it.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2003

Answers

Poe's own fascination with romantically ruined Biblical lands was not uncommon and he wrote articles and tales incorporating such subjects. First conceived probably in his poem "Al Araaf" talking of Gomorrah beneath the waves. Note how here as elsewhere(The Lake) he removes the names and references to leave the mood and theme to stand for themselves absent comprison or legend. it is an earthquake region, a prophecy of ultimate collapse of the drowned Cities of the Plain did exist. Pompeii was a similar inspiration for other poets and novelists.

It is not about the end of the world but the dissolution and fulfillment of the curse upon this city rotted and entombed over which death lingers. The crashing sense of destruction upon a tense, death in suspension theme is scene in many places in Poe, fables, The Valley of Unrest, The Conqueror Worm, even Usher. The unnatural silence once truly distubed desstoys the fragile landscape(Silense sonnet, The Sleeper, To Annie, etc.). One comes to the conclusion that Poe found great poetic power in that state of uspension between life and death, where art could look both ways standing as an observer in the balance.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2003