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Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

The romantic poets set to music and video, traditional folk songs through the looking glass

Edgar Allan Poe’s To One In Paradise: For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er!

Edgar Allan Poe’s To One In Paradise: For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er!

Poe’s To One In Paradise tells of the sorrow felt when you lose the connection to the one you love, essentially being shut out of paradise. Poe creates an almost Biblical tone, comparisons to the Garden of Eden and man’s fall from God’s grace are inevitable.

Has his love left this life to go to paradise, or is he simply deprived of her company, Poe’s To One In Paradise is vague on the matter? What he isn’t vague about is the loss – the light of life is over. For Poe’s love was all to him, as it is to all of us.

Poe’s To One In Paradise draws a picture of nature as Eden, but it’s nature with the hand of man upon it … a fountain, a shrine, as well as the hand of the supernatural … fairy fruits and flowers.

The author walks through life in a trance, an unending sorrow, for even in his dreams, he sees the world through her eyes, and finds life seeing the world as she does, following in her footsteps, and who of us haven’t done the same thing? There’s something that draws us to memory when we retrace the steps we took together, which she now takes alone.

Once again there is no hope, no anticipation of a second chance, just the certainty that all is lost and all is over in Poe’s To One In Paradise.

Thou wast that all 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.
Click to purchase To One In Paradise on Bandcamp
Click to learn more about The Conqueror Worm by Folkswitch
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