'The Haunted Palace' By Edger Allen Poe

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“The Haunted Palace” is another tale of innocence and happiness now corroded with sorrow and madness. It is fairly easy to say that “The Haunted Palace” is a metaphor for Edger Allen Poe’s own ghostly troubled mind, more than it is about a decaying palace. See, in this poem, Poe spins out an elaborate metaphor, comparing a beautiful palace to a human head. That's right: a human head. At first the palace/head is beautiful and stable, then gradually it becomes demented and disorganized. In “The Haunted Palace” Poe describes a palace, beautiful and peaceful. In the first stanza he describes it as “Once a fair and stately palace- Radiant palace- reared its head.” He labels it as radiant and fair. You can also see that he personifies the palace, …show more content…

He describes the banners of the palace as yellow, glorious, and golden. But he also makes sure to add a couple past-tense words to make sure that you understand that it used to look like this, the key word being used. He then goes on to lay a thick blanket of happy words on his poem. “A winged odor went away.” Meaning that with every gentle breeze that would go past the palace would leave smelling sweet. “Wanderers in that happy valley, through two luminous windows,” These lines start a new stanza, and a new description of the lovely palace. The speaker tells us that, when "wanderers" passed through the "happy valley," they could see through two "luminous" in the palace, and saw spirits moving about to well-tuned lutes. They were “dancing” around a throne, where, sitting, was the ruler in all his glory. In the next stanza it is just adding to the description of the outside of the palace. Then in the 5th stanza is where thing start to turn dark. “But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s highestate;” people like to think that the “evil things” would look like dementors from the harry potter book series. Poe starts to use present-tense words in this stanza as well, whereas, before he was telling it like it was long ago. “Of the old time entombed.” Now the beautiful palace is gone

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