The appreciation of to Helen

The appreciation of To Helen

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This is a paper of appreciation of the lyrics named To Helen, which is written by

Edgar Allan Poe. In this essay, there is the general introduction of the poet, who is still

famous in modern day. Then the essay analyzes his poem from the figure of speech.

There is a lot of beautiful rhetoric to describe a beautiful woman in his soul.

word: To Helen, Edgar Allan Poe, appreciation

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Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic,

considered the American Romantic Movement. He is best known for his tales of

mystery and the macabre. Poe was one of earliest American practitioners of the

detective-fiction genre. He is future credited with contributing to the emerging genre

of science fiction.

When writing poem, especially the lyric poem, Poe always uses mystery to express

some supernal feelings. He is good at using some mystery, untouched images that is

far away from readers in time and place. The image can be some objectives or person,

such as goddess, heaven, Zeus, Trojan War and so on, to show his unique thoughts

and feelings. Also he is the masters of the figure of speech, for he always uses simile,

metaphor, analogy, paronomasia, alliteration and so on to make his feelings describe

freely and totally. To Helen falls into this type of poem. In the poem, the poet uses

some archaic words and Greek story, together with a series of rhetoric to show his

first love .

To Helen is one of his most famous lyrics, which expresses his love to a beautiful

woman. This poem was written when Poe was only 14 years old when he saw Mrs.

Jane Stith Stanard who was the mother of a schoolmate of him. When he saw her he

loved her deeply and suddenly. Then he wrote this poem. However he used Helen’s

name to show his love. Helen is a goddess of Greek myths, who is the beautiful

daughter of Zeus. Her beauty once caused the 10 years long war, called Trojan War.

He used Helen’s name to show his love, for he thought the women was so beautiful

just like Helen. And his love to Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard just was the same as the

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common people’s love to Helen. Poe described the poem as “lines written, in my

passionate boyhood, to the first, purely ideal love of my soul.”

The poem follows a basic iambic rhythm. The rhyme scheme flows as ABABB,

ABABA, and ABBAB. It includes three stanzas, of these there are five lines

separately. In every stanza, Poe describes the beauty of Helen, in fact is Mrs. Jane

Stith Stanard, in the outside and inside. And in the first verse, the love that the poet

describes to Helen is beyond the love between men and women. The love includes

some other love, such as the love to hometown, the love to relatives, and the love to

freedom and peace. In the following verse, Helen’s beauty the poet describes is

beyond our imagination and beyond his words by using comparison to the beauty of

some goodness. In the last verse, he calls that Helen is holy in beauty. So we can see

that the description is more and more deeper than the previous one. In this poem, the

poet uses a lot of the /i:/ /s/ sounds, then when we read, we feel the sound is very

beautiful, and can feel poet’s deep love to Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard. It is like a lyric

song, and we can enjoy it freely.

Poet often shows his love by using many images, such as visual image, olfactory

image and kinesthetic images and so on. In the first verse, “roam” and “bore” gives

people a moving picture. In the second verse, the “hyacinth hair” and “brilliant

window-niche” which is in the third verse, are visual image, and they give us an

imagination of the beauty of Helen. From these images, we can have a general

understanding of this poem. In the first verse, the beauty of Helen can be feel from

distant, however the second verse it is a details description of her beauty. In the last

verse it is a holy imagination of her beauty. More details of the poem are following.

In the first verse, firstly, there is an allusion in this verse, Helen is coming from the

Greek story, and the wonderer here is also the people in Trojan War. Secondly, there

are many comparisons. The beauty of Helen and the beauty of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard;

the love to Helen from common people, especially Greek people, compared with the

love to Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard from the poet; how the soldiers are tempered by war

compared with how the back home people love their home and how they are excited

when they are free from the war. So in this verse the order of the words should be like

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this “Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nicean barks of yore that bore the weary,

way-worn wanderer to his own native shore gently over a perfumed sea.” Further

more, there is much other rhetoric in details. We can see a “like” in the second line,

and it is a simile here. In the third line, there is a “perfumed sea”, and sea can not feel

something that is smelled perfumed, it can only smelled by human beings, so it is a

transferred epithet. In the fourth line, there are the same /w/ sounds at the beginning

of the word, “weary, way-worn wanderer”, and then it is alliteration. The repetition of

this sound gives people a very powerful tired image that can show how the soldiers

ware tempered by war. In the last line, there is a pun. The “native shore” can refer to

the shore in the hometown; also it can refer to their mother land. At last, from the

appreciation above, we can see that Helen, or say Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, is beautiful

not only in the outside but also in the inner world. Because her beauty can let people

think of their hometown, natives and peace world. Her beauty is humanized.

In the second verse, there is another transferred epithet in the first line, which is

“desperated seas”. It is obviously that it is the feelings of human beings not the seas.

In the following two lines, “thy” has been repeated again and again, it is a parallelism,

and it is an emphasis on the beauty of Helen. So do the last two lines, “to the glory

that was Greece, and the grandeur that war Rome”. In the second line, there is

alliteration, “hyacinth hair”. In the third line, there is a metaphor that describes the

beautiful hair of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard just like the hair of Naiad, who is also

goddess in Greek story governing the seas. In this line we can also find it is an

allusion. “brought me home” is another pun in this poem, it can refer to bring me to

my hometown and also refer to let me know and understand. According to the talking

above, we can know more clearer of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, and her beauty is very

mystery and beyond the human and very untouched.

In the last verse, we can also learn how beautiful Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard is. In the

first line, the poet uses two archaic words “yon” and “lo”. By using these two words,

the poet describes a very old and mystery image. In the second line, there are two

internal rhymes “statue-like, stand” together with “see, thee”. Here is a “like”, so also

it is a simile. In the third line, there is another archaic image “agate lamp” to refer to

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the old and mystery situation. In the fourth line, “Psyche” is another allusion, Psyche

refer to soul in the Greek. In classical legend, Psyche, the lover of Cupid, was a

woman so beautiful that the goddess Venus was jealous of her. So we can see how

beautiful Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard is. In this verse, the poet describes the beauty is holy

and untouched.

In all, we can see how the poet loves Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, who is not only

beautiful in the outside, but also in her inner world. That is all we can see from this

poet.

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