2. Stygian river. The Styx was a river of Hades, across which the souls of the dead had to be ferried.
3. Guy De Vere: the mourning lover. It is he who speaks in the second and fourth stanzas.
13. Peccavimus: literally, "we have sinned." This stanza is the reply of the false friends.
THE VALLEY OF UNREST (Page 14)
Published in 1831 as "The Valley Nis," with an obscure allusion to a
"Syriac Tale":
Something about Satan's dart—
Something about angel wings—
Much about a broken heart—
All about unhappy things:
But "the Valley Nis" at best
Means "the Valley of Unrest."
Later it was published in magazines and in the 1845 edition, revised and improved, and transformed into a simple landscape picture,—one of the strange, weird, unearthly landscapes so characteristic of Poe.
THE COLISEUM (Page 15)
This poem was submitted in the prize contest in Baltimore in 1833, and would have been successful but for the fact that the author's story, "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle," had taken the first prize in its class. It was republished several times, but not much altered. The usual spelling is "Colosseum." It is very unlikely that Poe ever saw the Colosseum, though it is barely possible his foster parents may have taken him to Rome during the English residence (see Introduction, page xii).
13-14. Apparently a reference to Jesus, but characteristically vague.