Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!
Interpretation
This quote expresses a sense of loss and sorrow due to the passage of time and the corruption of love.
In this poignant reflection, Edgar Allan Poe laments the journey of love twisted by time into something corrupt and painful. The imagery of the 'accursed time' and 'unholy pillow' suggests a romantic ideal that has been marred by societal expectations and moral decay, evoking deep emotions of longing and grief for what has been lost.
In practice
A speaker could use this quote during a poetry reading to illustrate the complexities of love.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
The moon is nothing But a circumambulating aphrodisiac Divinely subsidized to provoke the world Into a rising birth-rate
It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.
Love is what you've been through with somebody.
Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.
Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.
I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.
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