Purple Pain

I asked myself — “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death — was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — equally is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Philosophy of Composition

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It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; --
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me...
- E. A. Poe, Annabel Lee

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I determined, then, to place the lover... in a chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. The room is represented as richly furnished—this in mere pursuance of the ideas I have already explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis.
- E.A. Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

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I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem — some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects… I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain… As commonly used, the refrain… depends for its impression upon the force of monotone — both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity — of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so vastly heighten, the effect, by adhering, in general, to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought : that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain — the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried.
- E. A. Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

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Purple rain, purple rain.
Purple rain, purple rain.
Purple rain, purple rain.
Purple rain, purple rain.
- Prince (1958-)

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