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In the volume of 1831, Poe substituted for the first fifteen lines of “Al Aaraaf” a different and longer introductory passage, retaining only two and a half lines of the earlier version unchanged. This has enough unity to justify its collection as a separate composition. The author never reprinted it; hence the only text, that of Poems (1831), is used here.
[[n]]
5
Of thee will I write; [page 160:]
Thy world has not the dross of ours,
10
Yet all the beauty — all the flowers
That list our love, or deck our bowers
In dreamy gardens, where do lie
While the silver winds of Circassy
15
Little — oh! little dwells in thee
Like unto what on earth we see:
Beauty's eye is here the bluest
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20
On the sweetest air doth float
The most sad and solemn note —
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If with thee be broken hearts,
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That its echo still doth dwell,
25
Thou! thy truest type of grief
[1831]
2-3 The reader will naturally think of Shakespeare's title for his play A Midsummer Night's Dream, a great favorite of Poe's. (“Al Aaraaf” was probably planned in the summer of 1828.)
20-21 Killis Campbell (in Poems, p. 175) compared Shelley's “To a Skylark,” line 90: “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” Poe is believed to have read Shelley and Keats in 1830.
22ff. Campbell (see previous note) compared “Al Aaraaf,” Poe's note 26: “Sorrow is not excluded from ‘Al Aaraaf,’ but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead ...”
23f. Compare Poe's story “Berenicë” for “the spirit of a departed sound ... seemed to be ringing in my ears.” The sound one hears when one holds a conch shell to the ear is commonly said to be the “echo of the sea” — at least children are told so.
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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) (Mysterious Star!)