The following two poems are about Helen of Troy. Renowned in the ancient world for her beauty, Helen was the wife of Menelaus, a Greek King. She was carried off to Troy by the Trojan prince Paris, and her abduction was the immediate cause of the Trojan War. Read the two poems carefully. Considering such elements as speaker, diction, imagery, form, and tone, write a well-organized essay in which you contrast the speakers’ views of Helen.
Initial Essay
In the poems “Helen” by H.D. and “To Helen” by Edgar Allen Poe, the two poets present contrasting views of Helen of Troy. While the first author impartially illustrates an unpopular, bleak Helen, the second paints an infatuated lover’s perception of the subject. The authors use contrasting speakers, rhetorical devices, and shifts in tone to give evidence to their description of Helen of Troy.
The first poem’s speaker is clearly detached. They describe Helen in third person, addressing no audience in particular, and sticking simply to a calm explanation of Greece’s loathing perception of Helen. They do not appear to attempt to invoke a particular emotion in their audience. The second poem, conversely, is directly addressed to Helen. The speaker consistently praises Helen, expressing their deep infatuation for her. Through the different attempts by speakers, the poets present contrasting images of Helen, the first being a hated woman and the second being a deeply loved one.
The differences in the poets’ approaches are also apparent in their choice of rhetorical devices. The first poem uses blazon ironically. Blazon, typically used to list a woman’s body parts in praise, is used differently in this poem. The detached speaker describes Helen’s “white face”, “cool feet”, and “slenderest knees”, acknowledging her beauty but focusing on Greece’s hatred for her. In the second poem, the speaker uses metaphors to address his love for Helen, comparing her to “those Nicean barks of yore”, to explain that she represents safety and comfort to him, a “weary, way-worn wanderer”. He uses a metaphor, again, in the second stanza, saying that she “brought [him] home”, giving him direction and belonging. In the first poem, the blazon is while explaining all that Helen has destroyed, whereas in the second, she appears to be a haven.
Each perspective, however, gains depth in the final stanzas of each poem through the shift in tone. The first poem includes an inconsistent rhyme scheme, relying heavily on assonance and slant rhymes and remaining free verse. Still, in the final stanza, after explaining Greece’s hate of Helen, the speaker describes her as “God’s daughter, born of love”, which is opposite to the previous descriptions of her. This suggests that Greece may not be as adamantly against Helen as originally described. This theme is also apparent in the second poem; although the rhyme scheme is far more consistent, this one wavers more as each stanza progresses. The dissolution of the rhyme scheme, emphasized more in each stanza, also parallels the shift in metaphors. Originally, the speaker describes Helen as a comfort and haven, comparing her to the Naiads, beautiful and mystical water creatures. However, in the final stanza, she is compared to Psyche, a beautiful woman but also only a mortal. This shift in comparison of Helen from mystical creatures to a mortal who visited the underworld suggests doubt in the speaker and a subtle fading of their infatuation of her.
Active Reading
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