Comment 2 of 3, added on January 18th, 2006 at 2:36 PM.

The first stanza establishes a prototypical image of an island paradise. Often we associate Islands with tropical ocean beauty, as well as isolation. So this paradise of the speaker is isolated (only he can see it, in other words). This is further given the qualities of an imaginary love.

The second stanza "clouds" cover the image of the dream and the future calls to him to move forward, but he can't get over the past that held the dream.

The speaker loses the strength to keep going on with life comparing his grief at the loss of his dreams to other things (tree, etc.) that can't go on into the future once some calaminity happens.

The last stanza repeats his spiritual death, while he sees the ghosts of his dream dancing eternally (always in sight, but like ethereal spirits, unable to be physically touched).

This is not an instructional poem saying you must do one thing or the other to have a better life. Rather this is analytic poem. Basically this is how it is buddy, you take your own lesson from it. For example an instructional story might claim racism is bad and you shouldn't be racist, while an analytical story might show you what racism is, depicting the act and the emotions involved, but still making no value judgement (just laying the reality of it out for the reader to come away with their own value judgement).

Poe's poem works the same way; though, it is not about racism. The poem is basically about what happens when you can't get past a dream you've had that has failed (whether it be a relationship you were in with a girl you loved who has dumped you or your dreams of being a rockstar that never reached fruition or like Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy whose title character wanted to study the Classics in college and never got the chance). It is about a regret, a longing, that never dies and thus kills the person. If you let your failed dreams hold you down, you can't enter into what promises the future might hold.

Poe, however, doesn't state that you must stop doing this and get over it (where Emerson in his poem "Give All to Love" pretty much states at the end to get over it and you'll have a happier life). Poe just depicts the reality of the situation in honest imagery and language, leaving the reader to decide what the speaker should do.



Eric from United States