by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 28, 2008   Last Updated: February 10, 2011

Edgar Allan Poe was "America's greatest poet" according to novelist Andrew Lang. Perhaps befitting the gothic poet, "Ulalume" has a secret history. And it reveals the technique that made Poe's poems beautiful.

Besides its haunting, romantic subject (which Poe was famous for), "Ulalume" showcases another important talent that gets less appreciation: his perfect poetic rhythm. While describing an October stroll by "the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," Poe manages to accent every third syllable flawlessly throughout much of the poem. ("The skies they were ashen and sober, the leaves they were crisped and sere...") And he uses a lulling rhythm with lines which often repeat much of the preceding line (For example, "The leaves they were withering and sere...")

But Poe originally wrote the poem as an exercise in elocution - it was to be included in a lecture on public speaking. Ironically, it was rejected by the speaker, and later also rejected by a literary magazine. After its first publication, Poe asked that it be re-published anonymously in another magazine with a note asking readers if they could identify its author. Strangely, the poem's final stanza was later omitted by Poe's executor (though Poe himself even admitted this stanza was confusing). Fans of "Ulalume" are often unaware of this "secret" second ending.

The poem describes a dark walk, as the moon rises, remembering days "when my heart was volcanic," though suggesting a dark present filled tears over the death of a love one. (The author acknowledges "these cheeks where the worm never dies.") The author converses with "Psyche," who gives voice to his own fears that some horrible surprise waits at the end of their strolling discussion of the moon. ("Ah, fly! Let us fly! For we must!")

The relaxed rhythm captures the listless stupor of the grieving poet, and he responds with an enthusiastic defense of the hope and beauty offered by moonlight. But he's wrong. Their walk down the scenic vista ends when they're "stopped by a door of a tomb."

"'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

At that point, it's no longer the October skies which are ashen and sober, but the narrator's heart, horrified that he'd wandered to a stark reminder of this painful death. "Ah, what demon has tempted me here," he wails. In the missing final stanza, he wonders if the moon had been a warning, sent by ghouls "from the Hell of the planetary souls" to warn them away from the tomb.

I heard a story that a famous poet was asked to name the most beautiful word in the English language, and he chose "ululate." (It rhymes with itself, almost like a lullaby, though its meaning is closer to "wail".) It's almost as though Poe combined the word "ululate" with "luminous" for his poem about the memory of a woman which leads to an anguishing sight by the rising moon.

In the official final stanza, the narrator acknowledges that he remembers the vault and its surrounding landscape - because they'd buried her body there exactly one year before.

"Well I know now this dim lake of Auber, this misty mid-region of Weir..."

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