Jan 1, 2010

Ulalume | Summary

A ballad comprised of nine stanzas that vary in length from nine to thirteen lines, "Ulalume" was written and published by Poe in 1847, the year that his young wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, died. The poem is related by a first-person narrator as he wanders with his Soul through a semi-real, semi-imagined land—or dreamscape, filled with gloom and images of volcanic destruction.

The initial setting is a lonely October night of the narrator's "most immemorial year" as he moves beside a dark lake of "Auber" (the last name of a contemporary composer of sad music) and through the...