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The chief interest of this poem lies in its foreshadowing of “Ulalume.” The Evening Star thought of as warm is, of course, the planet Venus, the Lady of Love, the crescent Astarte of the later poem.
Campbell (Poems, pp. 160-161) suggests what may be accepted as sure, that Poe had in mind the opening lines of one of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, “While Gazing on the Moon's Light”:
While gazing on the moon's light,
A moment from her smile I turn’d,
To look at orbs, that, more bright,
In lone and distant glory burn’d.
But too far
Each proud star, [page 74:]
For me to feel its warming flame;
Much more dear
That mild sphere,
Which near our planet smiling came.
Poe, who commented on the coldness of the moon in “Tamerlane,” “Dreams,” “Al Aaraaf,” and “Ulalume,” wrote “Evening Star” as a reply to Moore's verses. Similar replies by Poe to poems of other authors are “Sonnet — Silence” and “Eulalie.”
TEXT
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), pp. 28-29, is the text here followed. There are no variants, for Poe printed the poem only once, and no manuscripts are known.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:1 - TOM1P, 1969] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions-The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (T. O. Mabbott) (Evening Star)