Eulalie
The beloved bride described by the speaker of Eulalie—A Song.
The book
The figure in the poem
Close readingEulalie is the bride celebrated by the speaker of Edgar Allan Poe's Eulalie—A Song. Her arrival changes the speaker's account of his life from solitary grief to shared happiness. The poem gives her an idealized presence, with relatively little independent history, because its subject is the transformation the lover attributes to their relationship.
Her arrival divides the speaker's life in two
The opening describes the speaker's earlier world as stagnant and sorrowful. Eulalie's becoming his bride supplies the event that ends this condition. The repeated account of the marriage makes the change sound emphatic and celebratory.
This structure gives Eulalie enormous emotional importance without establishing that she literally removes every difficulty from another person's life. The poem records the lover's experience of happiness. Its sweeping claims belong to the song's heightened voice, and should be read as declarations of feeling rather than a realistic history of a marriage.
Why the comparisons keep returning to light
Stars and moonlit clouds provide the terms of comparison for Eulalie's eyes and hair, yet the speaker insists that those objects cannot equal her. The failure of comparison is deliberate. Each attempt to describe her makes ordinary measures of beauty seem insufficient.
The movement also reverses the opening's stagnant world. Eulalie is associated with brightness, motion, and responsiveness. Her significance is not contained in a list of attractive features; those features belong to a larger change in how the speaker perceives everything around him.
A brief indication of feeling returned
The speaker says that her soul answers his with a corresponding sigh. This is one of the poem's few indications of an exchange rather than an act of looking. It suggests reciprocity, although the report remains entirely within his voice.
That limit matters when describing Eulalie. The poem does not supply her conversation, motives, or earlier relationships. An interpretation can examine how the lover imagines mutual feeling, but cannot turn his idealization into an independently documented account of her personality.
A different use of love from The Raven
Within The Raven and Other Poems, Eulalie offers a useful comparison with the bereaved speaker of The Raven. One speaker defines the present through an absent beloved; the other defines it through the joy of a beloved's presence. Their claims are equally absolute in opposite emotional directions.
The comparison helps resist the assumption that every woman in Poe's poems must be a doomed or already dead beloved. Eulalie's poem ends in its own continuing celebration. Importing a later tragedy from Poe's biography would replace that particular ending with a different story.
Sources and passages
- Edgar Allan Poe, Eulalie—A Song
Primary text: page 24 of the 1845 collection. The three stanzas establish the marriage, comparisons of brightness, and claim of mutual feeling.
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Primary text for the comparison between the bereaved lover and Eulalie's celebrating speaker.
Voice, imagery, and form
- A marriage that changes the speaker’s accountThe speaker contrasts earlier loneliness with Eulalie becoming his bride. Her arrival reorganizes the poem around companionship.
- A gentle, smiling presenceHe describes Eulalie as gentle and smiling. These qualities supply the warmth of his account.
- Hair and eyesThe poem gives Eulalie yellow hair and bright eyes. Celestial comparisons enlarge the speaker’s praise of ordinary features.
- Reciprocal feelingThe speaker says that Eulalie answers his feelings with her own. His account of happiness depends on shared affection.
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