Tragically, Jane Stanard was dying from a malignant brain tumor. By the spring of 1824 she was confined to her bed and Edgar was not allowed to see her. When she died insane on April 28, Edgar was devastated. Like his mother, she had deserted him, dying a painful death at a young age. Helen became Edgar's ideal woman - unattainable, beautiful, and doomed. In Edgar's mind, beauty was now forever linked with death. (Meyers, 1992 p.17).Perhaps as a way of holding in to the memory of Jane, Poe composed "To Helen," which eloquently describes his beloved, and the beauty and purity he saw in her. In the first of the poem's three stanzas, Poe compares Helen's beauty to the ships of Nicea, a city near the Sea of Marmara. In the second stanza he refers to her "Naiad airs." According to Greek and Roman mythology a naiad is a spirit that occupies springs, fountains rivers, and lakes. Her "Naiad airs," we are told, have brought the poet home "To the glory that was Greece/ And the grandeur that was Rome." In the poem's last stanza, he refers to Helen as Psyche, a Greek personification of the soul. Poe's ode to his first love, written at the youthful age of just fifteen, is one of his most famous compositions. (Krutch, 1926, p.23-25).In 1826, at the age of seventeen, Poe entered the University of Virginia. Although a good student he was forced to gamble since John Allan did not provide well enough. Having heard about Poe's gambling debts, Allan arrived in Charlottesville to investigate the matter himself. He was shocked to discover that his foster son owed more than $2,500 in gambling debts and personal loans. Furious, Allan paid only those he considered important and refused to pay the others. Poe was humiliated. Allan angrily withdrew Poe from school, and broke off his engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweethear...
