Notes on Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen"

[bumblepudding]

In Poe’s poem “To Helen,” we find the following verses:

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Editors interpret the phrase “hyacinth hair” differently. R. S. Gwynn, in Poetry: An Anthology, explains that Helen’s

Comments

[ambar]

All the hyacinths I have known were purple. I always interpreted it as curling, like the hyacinth's petals.

[bumblepudding]

Then you and Poe are sympatico. :) Unlike Poe and the editors of poetry anthologies, it would seem.