In “William Wilson” Poe writes not a tale but a symbolic confession. Poe considers himself as a poet, although, he leaves only fifty poems to the world. Poe says of himself, “with me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion” (Stern 586). Poe’s poems concern his love, his inner-self, and above all death, the ending of things, and the melancholy associated with loss and bereavement (Stern 586). To some, Poe never achieves true fame, yet four years before his death, the life of his literary career climaxes. In 1845, “The Raven” appears in the Mirror, and in The Raven and Other Poems, his major volume of poems. In “The Raven,” Poe writes of a man who yearns “for an unattainable supernatural beauty” (Magill 2242). By beauty, Poe means something very specific: “the pleasurable excitement of the soul as it reaches for a perfection beyond this earth” (Magill 2242). The narrator of this melancholy poem losses a loved one, “…the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—” (Poe 396). Then, the narrator receives a visitor, “in there stepped a stately Raven…perched above my chamber door—Perched, and sat, and nothing more” (Poe 396). This ebony bird, a “…ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore,” to some, represents a great evil (Poe 397). To some, it represents a messenger from the narrators long lost love.In “Romance” Poe makes his point through imagery, not argument like so many other poets. In “Romance” the contrast is not between poetry and science but between the ideal world of the imagination and the painful world of everyday reality. In two stanzas, Poe shows a “painted paroquet” of a young man’s life. This paroquet, “hath been—a most familiar bird—taught me my alphabet to say—to lisp my ...
