Israfel
by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Israfel by Edgar Allan Poe
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute”;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love’s a grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervour of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
Breaking Down Israfel
"And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the Sunshine of ours."
This compares the shadow of Heaven, a break in the its light, as being equal to the brightest light on all of Earth. The comparison is very well done by Poe and does a great job of showing how much superior he believes Heaven is to Earth. In another section, Poe says,
"If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky."
As the reader can see Poe thinks if he were to switch with Israfel, Israfel "might not sing so wildly well" while Poe thinks "a bolder note than this might swell from my lyre within the sky". This section means that, if Israfel were to come to earth, he would not have as beautiful of a voice, and if Poe would sing much better in Heaven than on earth.
So, in conclusion, Poe believes mortality holds him down, and that if he could switch places with Israfel he could experience the true beauty of Heaven compared to the shadow of it he has lived with on Earth.