As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the Boreal Pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere;
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year—
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber,
(Though once we had journeyed down here)
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent
Here, the speaker first acknowledges (though passively) that he had been in this location before. It is a passive acknowledgment because it is in parentheses, indicating that, at the moment of the walk depicted in the poem, he had not remembered being there before. This acknowledgment is placed in such a stanza as it does away with foreshadowing and states what has already been insinuated through the mention of the “treacherous and sere” memories.
Ulalume