Poetry · Chapter
A Paean explained
The speaker mourns the death of a young woman, reflecting on the hypocrisy of her friends who loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, yet now weep at her funeral.
What happens
The speaker mourns the death of a young woman, reflecting on the hypocrisy of her friends who loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, yet now weep at her funeral. He declares his own love for the dead woman, whom he considers his bride, and refuses to sing a mournful requiem, instead offering a paean of old days to celebrate her flight to heaven.
Themes in this chapter
Death and Mortality
The poem centers on the death of a young woman, exploring the rituals of burial and the speaker's complex emotions toward her passing.
Love and Beauty
The speaker expresses a drunken love for the dead woman, whom he calls his bride, and contrasts her beauty with the dishonor of tears.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“How shall the burial rite be read? The solemn song be sung? The requiem for the loveliest dead, That ever died so young?”
How should we conduct the funeral service and sing the mournful song for the most beautiful person who has ever died so young?
The speaker opens with a rhetorical question about the proper way to mourn the deceased.
“They loved her for her wealth— And they hated her for her pride— But she grew in feeble health, And they love her—that she died.”
Her friends valued her for her money and resented her arrogance, but as she became sickly, they now love her because she has died.
The speaker criticizes the hypocrisy of the mourners who only appreciate the dead woman in death.
“But she is gone above, With young Hope at her side, And I am drunk with love Of the dead, who is my bride.”
She has ascended to heaven with Hope beside her, and I am intoxicated with love for the dead woman, whom I consider my bride.
The speaker expresses his personal devotion to the deceased, seeing her as his bride in death.