Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) Selected Poetry (Poe Style Sheet) The City in the Sea (1845)

Questions:

1. Poe is the most Romantic of all American authors. He affected a Romantic, Byronic persona as an author, and his poetry and prose incorporate nearly every possible element of Romanticism. What are some Romantic features or themes in the poem below? Consider Romantic rhetoric.

2. What characteristics of Poe's personal style? How can you tell this is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe?

3. Compare this poem's form as "free verse" or "formal verse" with poems by Dickinson and Whitman (and other poems by Poe). (Comparative Study of Poe, Whitman, Dickinson)

The City in the Sea

[1.1]    Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
[1.2]    In a strange city lying alone
[1.3]    Far down within the dim West,
[1.4]    Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
[1.5]    Have gone to their eternal rest.
[1.6]    There shrines and palaces and towers
[1.7]    (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
[1.8]    Resemble nothing that is ours.
[1.9]    Around, by lifting winds forgot,
[1.10]  Resignedly beneath the sky
[1.11]  The melancholy waters lie.

[2.1]    No rays from the holy heaven come down
[2.2]    On the long night-time of that town;
[2.3]    But light from out the lurid sea
[2.4]    Streams up the turrets silently—
[2.5]    Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
[2.6]    Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
[2.7]    Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—           [fanes = temples]
[2.8]    Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
[2.9]    Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
[2.10]   Up many and many a marvelous shrine
[2.11]   Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine        [friezes = sculptured decorations]
[2.12]   The viol, the violet, and the vine.          [viol = stringed musical instrument]
[2.13]   So blend the turrets and shadows there
[2.14]   That all seem pendulous in the air,
[2.15]   While from a proud tower in the town
[2.16]   Death looks gigantically down.

[3.1]    There open fanes and gaping graves            [fanes = temples]
[3.2]    Yawn level with the luminous waves;
[3.3]    But not the riches there that lie
[3.4]    In each idol's diamond eye—
[3.5]    Not the gaily-jeweled dead
[3.6]    Tempt the waters from their bed;
[3.7]    For no ripples curl, alas!
[3.8]    Along that wilderness of glass—
[3.9]    No swellings tell that winds may be
[3.10]   Upon some far-off happier sea—
[3.11]   No heavings hint that winds have been
[3.12]   On seas less hideously serene.

[4.1]    But lo, a stir is in the air!
[4.2]    The wave—there is a movement there!
[4.3]    As if the towers had thrust aside,
[4.4]    In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
[4.5]    As if their tops had feebly given
[4.6]    A void within the filmy Heaven.
[4.7]    The waves have now a redder glow—
[4.8]    The hours are breathing faint and low—
[4.9]    And when, amid no earthly moans,
[4.10]   Down, down that town shall settle hence,
[4.11]   Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
[4.12]   Shall do it reverence.