Analysis of Poe's "To Helen (Poem of Later Life)"

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) was a poet, short-story writer, and critic (Perkins, 1991). During his prolific writing career, Poe would produce many volumes of verse, short stories, and criticism. He was also a man whose life was characterized by frequent financial difficulties, failed or tragic love affairs and/or marriages, and a seemingly unquenchable romantic bent (Perkins, 1991). A number of his love affairs served him well as the source of ideas for his poems, among which "To Helen (Poem of Later Life)" must be numbered. It is the purpose of this essay to examine the poem, attempting to determine whether Poe saw this particular poem as a serious artistic work or a piece of deliberate flattery created in hopes of convincing its recipient to marry him and thus provide him with much-needed financial security. It will be argued that while Poe may have had ulterior motives in addressing Sarah Helen Whitman (herself a respected poet), he was sufficiently concerned with his artistic legacy to use his skills effectively. The ultimate effect, however, is one of self-serving flattery and of an attempt to ingratiate oneself with the recipient of the poem.

It should be noted that Sarah Helen Whitman of Providence, Rhode Island, was known to Poe and that the two exchanged a series of impassioned and literary letters in 1848 (Perkins, 1991). "To Helen (Poem of Later Life)" is clearly a love song, a poem addressed to a woman

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r some other long period of time has elapsed, he recalls every detail of their one meeting. He is telling her that though she was apparently unaware of his silent presence outside of her "enchanted" garden, the impression that she left on his was sufficiently strong to influence his emotions for many years. This is, of course, great flattery for a woman of a "certain age" as Helen must have been when this poem was addressed to her. The power of Helen's eyes to reflect her inner soul or thoughts is stressed by Poe (2004, p. 2) in the following lines: "How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!/How silently serene a sea of pride!/ How daring an ambition; yet how deep-/How fathomless a capacity for love." These lines affirm the fact that Poe is engaged in flattery and not in accurate description. While one does not, of course, expect a poet to simply describe a phenomena in simple language (and embellishment is integral to poetry in some of its forms), Poe seems in these lines to have gone somewhat far. One suspects that it would have been literally impossible for him to have learned all this about Helen simply by seeing her in the moonlight in her garden. There is, for example, no indication in the poem that Poe spoke to Helen

Category: Literature - A