"Ulalume" is a ballad, a poem that tells a story. Like other ballads, "Ulalume" includes refrains (repetition of key phrases). Although the poem is not intended to be sung, its rhyme, rhythm, repetition, and alliteration give it a musical quality.  

Setting 
 
The action takes place on a bleak October evening, probably Allhallows Eve (Halloween), in a forest near a lake.  
 
Characters and References to Entities 

The Narrator (Speaker): Unnamed man whose beloved has died in the past year. 
Psyche: The narrator's personified soul, addressed as a female. Psyche is described as having wings.   
Astarte: Moon goddess of fertility, love, and reproduction in the ancient Middle East. She beckons the narrator to follow her. 
Dian: Another name for Diana, the virgin moon goddess in Roman mythology. In Greek mythology, her name is Artemis. The narrator compares Astarte to Dian. Dian herself does not appear in the poem.  
Ulalume: The narrator's deceased beloved. Poe conceived the idea for the poem several months after his wife, Virginia, died. It is likely that he had her in mind when he was writing the poem.   
Ghouls: Demons that haunt the forest. They exhume and eat corpses.  
The Lion: A reference to the constellation Leo, a group of stars that include one very bright star. In "Ulalume," the narrator refers to the Lion as a threat when Astarte passed by him.  

Point of View 

The narrator tells the story in first-person point of view.  When he carries on a dialogue with Psyche, he uses quotation marks. The narrator uses past tense except in the quotations. As in other works of Poe, the narrator is distraught and subject to the whims of his imagination. His state of mind, of course, opens the way for elaborate metaphors depicting surreal images. In other words, a touch of madness makes the poem work.  

Themes  

Sadness 

The central theme of "Ulalume" is the profound and prolonged sadness which the death of a beautiful woman causes her beloved. This theme, a favorite of Poe, appeared in many of his other works, including "The Raven" and "Ligeia." 

The Pain of Old Memories 

The narrator seeks relief from the agony of remembering his lost love. But seeing the tomb of Ulalume in the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir" revives his memories of her and renews his agony.  

Deception 

Astarte deceives the narrator. Promising to lead him to a peaceful region, she leads him instead to the tomb of Ulalume, causing him to relive painful memories.  

Derivation of the Title 

No one knows for certain why Poe named the poem Ulalume. It is possible, however, that he coined the word from ululare, a Latin word meaning to shriek, howl, lament, or wail. But instead of using that Latin infinitive as he found it, he cut off the last three letters and replaced them with ume (pronounced oom) so that the word would rhyme with other words in the poem, gloom and tomb, and rhyme with an unspoken word that looms over the poem: doom. Keep in mind, too, that the vowel in ume rhymes with the vowels in ghoul. It all makes sense, but is it so? You be the judge.    

Figures of Speech 

Following are examples of figures of speech in "Ulalume":  

Alliteration: Of my most immemorial year (Line 5, Stanza 1)  
Alliteration: Our talk had been serious and sober (Line 1, Stanza 3) 
Anaphora:  
    It was night in the lonesome October 
       Of my most immemorial year;  
    It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
       In the misty mid region of Weir- 
    It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
       In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
Simile: There were days when my heart was volcanic / As the scoriac rivers that roll- (Comparison using as) 
Personification/Metaphor: Reference to the soul, Psyche, as a person  

The atmosphere of "Ulalume" is not only bleak and depressing but also mysterious and otherworldly. To create this atmosphere, Poe uses words connoting decay, disease, death, destruction, loneliness, and suffering; he combines them with words connoting vagueness, ethereality, and mystery. Among the words enabling Poe to create his nightmarish poem are ashen, withering, lonesome, dim, misty, dank, ghoul-haunted, sulphurous, groan, agony, sorrowfully, senescent, liquescent, nebulous, and Lethean. The phrase mid region in Stanzas 1 and 9 seems to suggest a place halfway between the world and the underworld. 
 
Rhyme Scheme and Meter 

Poe uses end rhyme throughout the poem. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the fourth, and the second line rhymes with the third. The rhyme scheme of other lines varies, since not all stanzas have the same length. The meter also varies, but Poe relies mainly on anapestic feet, sometimes mixed with iambic feet. Catalexis (an extra syllable at the end of a line) occurs occasionally. Following are examples: 

....iamb..... | ....anapest....... |....anapest. | .catalexis 
The SKIES | they were ASH | en and SO |  ber 

........anapest...... | .......anapest....... | ...anapest.....| .catalexis 
There were DAYS | when my HEART | was vol CAN | .ic 

......iamb......... | ....anapest..... |........anapest 
Though ONCE | we had JOUR | neyed down HERE 

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. After being orphaned at age two, he was taken into the home of a childless couple–John Allan, a successful businessman in Richmond, Va., and his wife. Allan was believed to be Poe’s godfather. At age six, Poe went to England with the Allans and was enrolled in schools there. After he returned with the Allans to the U.S. in 1820, he studied at private schools, then attended the University of Virginia and the U.S. Military Academy, but did not complete studies at either school. After beginning his literary career as a poet and prose writer, he married his young cousin, Virginia Clemm. He worked for several magazines and joined the staff of the New York Mirror newspaper in 1844. All the while, he was battling a drinking problem. After the Mirror published his poem “The Raven” in January 1845, Poe achieved national and international fame. Besides pioneering the development of the short story, Poe invented the format for the detective story as we know it today. He also was an outstanding literary critic. Despite the acclaim he received, he was never really happy because of his drinking and because of the deaths of several people close to him, including his wife in 1847. He frequently had trouble paying his debts. It is believed that heavy drinking was a contributing cause of his death in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.  

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