sweetest voice of all God's creatures.Koran." Coleridge's, "Kubla Khan", in British literature , is similar to "Israfel", in that they both offer a heavenly place of the "ideal."Israfel seems to represent a muse, of some sort, to Poe. He sits in heaven strumming his lyre and the over abundance of his voice carries over to earth, where Poe sits awaiting the stirring of emotion. Poetry is the evidence of Israfel's existence. Who does Israfel represent? Is it Poe himself ? It is easy to think that, considering the arrogance of Poe. I'm sure he especially would have liked to think this, that he was Israfel the angel, baring his soul to the creatures of earth, human and all,exalting himself as the best poet of all the other angels, so great that they must set down their own attempts of singing and poetry and listen to his. Poe saying to Emerson, Thoreau, and the like, " Listen to me! Look upon the truth of the human heart in my works, ye mighty and despair!" Is Poe Israfel? In a way, yes I would say he is. I believe it is what lies within Poe's heart and therefore a part of him. His inspiration, if you like. An inspiration which urges him onward in his poetry as well as frustrates him, in that he is the only one to hear the angels music. " How could they know, these heavy sleepers, these solemn memorizers of the banalities of textbooksthat in their midst, brooding over them in the long hours of the night, sat a spirit whose song was sweeter and clearer than that of all the archangels of God! How human and earthy, and how comforting to his own feelings it was, to imagine that even in heaven his voice would be heard above all others, and be found more acceptable." (Allen 233)The first seven lines concern the singing of Israfel who, as I have mentioned, sits in heaven and sings in such away that none of the other angels may surpass him. "Whose heart strings are a lute," Poe writes of Israfel in the second line of the poem which he directly quo...
