astrologers.

26-29. Poe here uses technical architectural terms with success.

plinth: the block upon which a column or a statue rests.

shafts: the main part of a column between the base and the capital.

entablatures: the part of a building borne by the columns.

frieze: an ornamented horizontal band in the entablature.

cornices: the horizontal molded top of the entablatures.

32. corrosive: worn away by degrees; used figuratively of time.

36. At Thebes there is a statue which is supposed to be Memnon, the
mythical king of Ethiopia, and which at daybreak was said to emit the
music of the lyre.

EULALIE.--A SONG

19. Astarte: the Phoenician goddess of love.

THE RAVEN

41. Pallas: Greek goddess of wisdom.

46-47. Night's Plutonian shore: Pluto ruled over the powers of the lower
world and over the dead. Darkness and gloom are constantly associated
with him; the cypress tree was sacred to him and black victims were
sacrificed to him. Why does the coming of the raven suggest this realm
to the poet?

50. relevancy: appropriateness.

80. Seraphim: one of the highest orders of angels

82. respite and nepenthe: period of peace and forgetting.

89. balm in Gilead. See Jeremiah 8: 22; 46: 11 and Genesis 37: 25.

93. Aideen, fanciful spelling of Eden.

106. This line has been often criticized on the ground that a lamp could
not cause any shadow on the floor if the bird sat above the door. Poe
answered this charge by saying: "My conception was that of the bracket
candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as
is often seen in English palaces, and even in some of the better houses
of New York."

What effect does this poem have upon you? Work out the rhyme scheme in
the first and second stanzas. Are they alike? Does this rhyme scheme
help to produce the effect of the poem? Have you noticed a similar use
of "more" in any other poem? Point out striking examples of repetition,
of alliteration. Are there many figures of speech here?

TO HELEN

This Helen is Mrs. Whitman.

15. parterre: a flower garden whose beds are arranged in a pattern and
separated by walks.

48. Dian: Roman goddess representing the moon.

60. elysian: supremely happy.

65. scintillant: sending forth flashes of light.

66. Venuses: morning stars.

THE BELLS

"The Bells" originally consisted of eighteen lines, and was gradually
enlarged to its present form.

10.