Edgar Allan Poe Helen

After reading and analysing these passages, us as the reader can see that they are two poems on to different sides of a spectrum, with two completely different opinions on Helen. In Edgar Allan Poe's poem Helen is a very beautiful woman, Angelic even, she makes people feel safe and where they belong. We know this because Poe is comparing her to a ship, “Nicean barks of yore”, he clarifies this in lines 3-5 when he says “gently”, “bore”, and “weary way-worn wanderer”. Poe is not comparing her to the ship itself but to where the ship will take the tired warrior, and that is his home or “native shores”, home being a warm welcoming place. Helen is expressed as beautiful and angelic in stanza two and three, in stanza two Poe talks about her beautiful hair and face, comparing her to a hyacinth flower. In stanza three he (Poe) in the last two lines says “A Psyche from the regions which Are Holy land !” Psyche in Greek Mythology was the most beautiful mortal, who later becomes a goddess. Bringing me to my next point “Are Holy land !” in this line it is as if Poe is saying that she is so beautiful that she had to come …show more content…
has a completely different opinion on Miss Helen. Right off the bat we can see the huge difference in the poems, “All Greece hates” he says it clearly in the first line. There is no small amount of love for Helen, to H.D. she is a hated woman, not just hated by him but by all of Greece. In the second stanza we see just how deep and rooted the hate for Helen is, “All Greece reviles...the wan face when she smiles,” this poor woman is just smiling and all of Greece hates it, “deeper still...wan and white” they don’t like it even more when she doesn’t smile, there is nothing she can do to please Greece. In the third stanza H.D. spells it out for us “coul love indeed the maid,... laid,...white ash amid funereal cypresses.” the only way that Greece could love Helen is if Helen is dead and cremated, they all want her