The Hauted Palace - Essay Example

Poe employs symbolic imagery to show how innocence, sanity and good reasoning morbidly change into corruption and insanity. Poe illustrates in the first half of the poem the stability and prudence of the human mind. The palace and its royal imagery symbolize a rational person, completely in control of its thoughts and actions just like a kind king governing its people in a fair and proper manner. For example, the mind is likened to a “Radiant palace / In the monarch Thought's dominion” having good reasoning and sensibility (Poe 4-5).

The person’s thoughts are sound and filled with good sense. When this happens the mind is a place like the “greenest of our valleys” where everything is fresh, energetic, and flourishing (1). That is, the mind is filled with good thoughts and ideas which manifest themselves into equally better actions and behavior. The palace is so serene and glorious that angels roam about spreading their wings as “seraph spread a pinion” (7). This symbolizes how a mind can be filled with innocence and purity untainted by immorality and corruption.

Poe pauses in the middle of the second stanza to remind us that such goodness was something that happened a long time ago, “This – all this– was in the olden / Time long ago” (11-12). . Also, the person is even compared to Porphyrogene, an emperor of Constantinople, signifying the zenith and intellect a human mind can reach when filled with purity and wisdom (Bloom 33). Not only that, but the speech and words coming out of that person’s mouth are just as beautiful, wise, and sweet. These words are first formed and originated in the mind, meaning if the mind is healthy and pure so are all the other senses feeding it.

Here Poe uses the imagery of sparking jewels, pearl and ruby to indicate the person’s teeth and tongue behind a beautiful mouth, that is, the palace door. These all work together with the mind to set forth “A troop of Echoes”, a sweet melodious speech filled with “wit and wisdom” (29,32). In the fifth stanza, Poe fulfills the earlier foreshadowing and illustrates imagery of an attack on the palace and the king. This symbolizes the mental degradation of a person, succumbing to an onslaught of immorality, irrationality, and corruption (Bloom 33-34).

The mind is now devoid of stability, good sense, and sound judgment because “evil things, in robes of sorrow, / Assailed the monarch's high” (33-34). Again, Poe reminds us that the glory was something of the past, that is, the human mind has been corrupted to such an extent that the former “blushed and bloomed” state can’t return (38). The mind is now thoroughly disturbed and the beautiful language and words that once flowed like music have now broken down into a “discordant melody” so that nothing is smooth and flowing anymore (44).

Also, the same people that once used to sing the person’s praises and greet with shiny, sparkling eyes, now come forth in fear with swollen eyes as “red-litten windows” (42). The mind which was once