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.