Kansas University Weekly.
297
The first stanza is merely an introduction. It strikes the key note of the poem, and prepares us for gloomy unearthly feelings. The second stanza begins
Here once, through an alley Titanic
Of cypress, I roamed with my soul.
Of cypress, with Psyche, my soul.
Mr. Stoddard's objection to this repetition in particular is that it adds nothing to the effect. If by effect he means thought he is right. The refrain repeats a thought but the repetition is intended to add to an emotional effect. After telling us that he roamed through an alley of cypress with his soul the poet throws the attention back to the word cypress. It is like an afterthought aroused by the associations of the word cypress. The same effect is sought in repeating the words "with Psyche, my soul." This association is suggested, not stated. Here is the first place where explanations of cause will differ. Evidently Poe sought to satisfy something other than intellect in these lines. This is clear throughout the poem whether his efforts were successful or not.
The effect of the third stanza centers in the line
"Ah! night of all nights in the year."
This line, as it stands with the context, awakes a similar feeling in every imaginative reader. Yet if the intellect asks why this night should have had such associations, it will be disappointed. The effect and not its cause is all that Poe gives us.
The fourth stanza is complete formlessness of outline. Aside from telling us that light appears in the darkness, it leaves all to imagination. The light is a "something." Beyond that we cannot define it.
The fifth stanza is an enigma to the intellect. The "something" that makes light in the darkness is warmer than Dian. These words have no literal meaning yet the contrast of warmth with the cold, misty darkness, and the idea of revelling in regions of sighs takes strong hold on the imagination. The stanza is a symbol of emotions. An unhappy and tormented spirit sees the approach of a deliverer that has come,
in spite of opposition, to lead it "To the Lethean peace of the skies." We do not see either the spirit or the radiant deliverer; we have only the emotions which the spirit feels.
The sixth stanza is a symbol of doubt, mistrust and terror.
The seventh returns to the ecstasies of hope that beamed through the fifth stanza. More than that it is hope and trust conflicting with the doubt of the sixth stanza.
Doubt and gloom are conquered in the eighth stanza but, in following its path to happiness, the soul is stopped by the door of a tomb.
And I cried "It was surely October
In the last stanza fate throws the hopeful soul back to its original despair.
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed-I journeyed down here-
That I brought a dead burden down here.
On this night of all nights in the year
Ah! What demon has tempted me here?"
These incoherent lines express terror and despair. If we look for the cause of these feelings we find none. Were the cause stated, it would destroy the beauty of the poem.
A sculptor or a painter might portray a figure in an attitude of fright or horror, but should he add the cause of this fright or horror, the effect, in most cases, would be greatly diminished. The cause should be left to the imagination. In dealing with a mystery the imagination magnifies it many times; consequently, emotions arising from an imaginary cause will seem far more forcible than otherwise. The cause of all action in "Ulalume" is left to imagination. This explains its lack of form and outline. "I know" says Poe (Marginalia CCXV) "that indefinitiveness is an element of the true music—I mean the true musical expression. Give to it any undue decision—imbue it with any determinate tone and you deprive it at once of its ethereal, its real, its intrinsic, and essential character. You dispel its luxury of dream. You dissolve the atmosphere of the mystic upon which it floats. You exhaust it of its breath of faery. It now becomes a tangible and easily appreciable idea—a thing of the earth, earthly. It has not, indeed, lost its power to please, but all which I