32. corrosive: worn away by degrees; used figuratively of time.
36. At Thebes there is a statue which is supposed to be Memnon, the mythical king of Ethiopia, and which at daybreak was said to emit the music of the lyre.
EULALIE.—A SONG
19. Astarte: the Phoenician goddess of love.
THE RAVEN
41. Pallas: Greek goddess of wisdom.
46-47. Night's Plutonian shore: Pluto ruled over the powers of the lower world and over the dead. Darkness and gloom are constantly associated with him; the cypress tree was sacred to him and black victims were sacrificed to him. Why does the coming of the raven suggest this realm to the poet?
50. relevancy: appropriateness.
80. Seraphim: one of the highest orders of angels
82. respite and nepenthe: period of peace and forgetting.