To One in Paradise - Edgar Allan Poe
A Mourning Song for a Lost Ideal
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute—motionless—aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
“No more—no more—no more—”
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “To One in Paradise” expresses the profound sorrow and wistful reverence of a speaker grieving an unattainable or lost love. Through a dreamy mixture of nature imagery and lamenting repetition, Poe conveys both the depth of the speaker’s attachment and the unbridgeable gulf between present desolation and idealized memories.
In the first stanza, the beloved is likened to an idyllic landscape—a lush isle in a vast sea, full of fairy-like fruits and flowers. This depiction captures a sense of unearthly sweetness and sanctuary. Poe’s choice to describe the setting in ethereal, almost fantastical terms suggests that the speaker’s love was all-encompassing—a sustaining presence in an otherwise tumultuous world.
The middle stanzas spotlight the collapse of these bright illusions. The speaker laments that this once “starry Hope” has been swallowed by darkness. Time itself seems relentless, urging “On! on!” while the speaker is pinned between an unbearable past and a future offering little solace. The poem highlights Poe’s frequent motif: an internal battle against relentless, unchangeable forces. By framing the sea as a solemn voice and describing a stricken eagle or a “thunder-blasted tree,” Poe underscores life’s fragility and the sense that once-lush promise is forever gone.
In the final stanza, dreams become the speaker’s sole refuge. These nightly visions allow a fleeting reconnection with the beloved’s ‘grey eye’ and footstep, now consigned to an afterlife of memory. Whether real or imagined, the beloved persists in a timeless, transcendent realm the speaker can only visit in trance. In this duality—yearning for a paradise lost, yet repeatedly returning to it in thought—lies the central tension of the poem: love that once embodied hope has turned into an object of endless longing.
Thus, “To One in Paradise” stands as a heartfelt, almost hypnotic reflection on devotion that outlives its source. It merges earthly images of destruction with the spiritual persistence of memory, letting the reader feel both the weight of grief and the ghostly comfort in cherishing lost ideals. For Poe, this paradox underlines much of his poetic worldview: the most passionate human attachments often hover between the heights of wonder and the depths of irrevocable loss.
Key points
• The poem captures an ideal love, once vibrant, now relegated to memory.
• Nature imagery (isle, sea, eagle, tree) underscores themes of fleeting beauty and destruction.
• A persistent tension arises between the speaker’s longing for the past and an uncertain future.
• Poe’s vision blends sorrow with a dreamy evocation of the beloved’s enduring presence.