The Haunted Palace “The Haunted Palace” is one of Edgar Allen Poe's mysterious and phantasmagorical poems. Written in the same year as "The Devil in the Steeple" and included in his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Haunted Palace" is another tale of innocence and happiness now corroded by grief and madness. It's easy enough to say that “The Haunted Palace” is a metaphor for Poe's ghostly and tormented mind, rather than a ruined palace. Because in 1839, in a book it turned out that he comes across the main character of "The Fall of the House Usher". In the context in which it appears in “Usher,” it is startlingly clear that this is not a tale of earthly decay, but of mental and spiritual ruin. “In the greenest of our valleys,” he begins in the first stanza, “Once a palace beautiful and majestic, a palace radiant, raised its head. The lush and beautiful valley is nothing more than a glimpse into his past, when he was a bright budding young man. The “Radiant Palace” is a symbol of his once sharp and clear mind, full of “good angels” and pure thoughts. He gives clues to the true nature of the palace later in the stanza, proclaiming "In the domain of the monarch's thought - There he stood!" clearly the monarch is Poe, and his domain is his mind. In the second stanza he describes how the smells of the "gentle air" were always wafting through the palace. He continues to paint the picture of a beautiful valley, where the music moved constantly and where the king of the earth sat for the valley to see. Poe's childhood still brings out the nostalgia of a prosperous and enchanting period, in which he could be seen as the king, fully master of the thoughts that lived in his valley of bra... middle of paper.... .. never entered the “pale door” that had been “Pearl and shining ruby”. Pearl and Ruby appear to be her younger selves, complex white with rosy cheeks, and now her face is pale, gray and "hideous". With the rivers of thought now flowing in horrible ideas and contemplations, he can no longer "smile", but hears a "laughter". The laughter of madness slowly creeps up on him, dancing through the ruins of the palace peering out of Poe's sunken, bloodshot eyes and his old gray face. Poe was only thirty when he wrote "The Haunted Palace" and included it in "The Fall of the House of Usher." He would only live another ten years and write many more Gothic classics, each of them grappling with death, madness and loneliness, but perhaps this poem describes his vision of himself better than any of his other works. This is his self-portrait and his self-prophecy.