This week’s choice is “Eldorado” by Edgar Allan Poe and it’s partly inspired by Jesse Gilbert’s musical version and partly by last week’s poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”.
‘Over the Mountains
Edgar Allan Poe (1809—1849)
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,’
The shade replied,—
‘If you seek for Eldorado!’
Poem 440. Eldorado
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o’er his heart a shadow—
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’
‘Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,’
The shade replied,—
‘If you seek for Eldorado!’
This poem, like last week’s, tells a story about a knight but this one is about seeking for an impossible goal. The subject sets out on a knightly quest, much beloved of fiction writers but less frequent in a real mediaeval context: knights did go on journeys to the Crusades, to tournaments (even a journey in their own country could be a real undertaking) and on pilgrimages to holy sites. The idea of knights-errant sprang from chivalric romances more than reality.
The knight in this poem seeks the fabled Eldorado (a mythical city of gold) and spends much of his life travelling the world in a fruitless hunt. As his life ebbs, he encounters a shadow or ghost who directs him “Over the Mountains/Of the Moon,/Down the Valley of the Shadow”—this perhaps meaning the Valley of the Shadow of Death referred to in the Bible and implying that we only truly attain our goals in the afterlife.
I hadn’t noticed until I read the article on Wikipedia, but the poem uses the word ‘shadow’ in the middle of each stanza, rhyming it with Eldorado at the end of the stanza, and each time the word has a different meaning: the dappled sunlight in the first; the figurative shadow of depression that seizes his heart when he loses hope in the second; the shadow or phantom he encounters in the third and the shadow of the Valley of Death in the last.
The poem was one of the last Poe wrote before his early death and it perhaps reflects his depression at failing to achieve the greatness he felt he had earned. It was also written at the time of the California Gold Rush and may also reflect Poe’s disdain for the get-rich-quick mentality that prevailed at the time.
I like the simplicity of the poem and the clever use of the word ‘shadow’ and its connection to American history.
Jesse Gilbert’s setting of the poem is a good version.