ugh heaven and letting fall "a silvery-silken veil of light/With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber." In a few brief phrases Helen Whitman has been informed that she is possessed of a luminosity that is pervasive, and that (despite her apparent age!) she is also sultry and therefore sexually appealing to Poe.
Helen is capable of "enchanting" all who see her, not merely by the beauty of her soul and her countenance, but also because of her wisdom and her talent. Poe is referring in the first stanzas of the poem to a chance glimpse of Helen in the past during which she presented an image of some great sorrow to the world. Her face was "uptur
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