In the following essay I will talk about one of Edgar Poe's poems "To Helen" which was written in 1831 and revised in 1845. The poet wrote this poem not only to express his admiration for Helen's beauty (Helen of Troy), but also to express his infatuation and nostalgia for another woman. To understand this poem better, I will analyze this poem through various aspects of linguistics, which include the history of the English language under culture, intonation under phonetics, and mental image under semantics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The changes in the culture of the English language can be seen obviously in “To Helen”. As Cans says, “During Shakespeare's sixty-year life, more words entered the English language than at any other time in history, including literature…” (Cans, 2015) In “To Helen,” the word "classical" comes from the French “classique” and Latin “classicus” in 1610; the word “hyacinth” comes from the Old French “jacinte” and the medieval Latin “jacintus” in 1550; the word “agate” comes from the French “agate”, the Latin “achates” and the Greek “akhates” in the 1560s. The new words entered early modern English and were used in literary fields. Another change is the change in person. In “To Helen” there are many words that we don't use nowadays. For example, "thy" means "your" in modern English, "te" means "you", "yon" means "that", and "o'er" means "beyond". They appear in literature, especially in Shakespeare's period, but people do not use them in everyday life communication. The intonation of the recitation of a poem is important, which comes from the field of phonetics. Good intonation can bring out the emotion of a poem and better express the poet's meaning. The poem “To Helen” is a love poem. The poem uses similes, metaphors, and references to express his love and praise for Helen, and also uses three exclamation points. Therefore, if the reader wants to express the emotion contained in this poem, he or she must know what the poet wants to express in each sentence and read it with the appropriate tone. Using myself as an example, I was asked to recite poetry in my world literature class, just like the other students. “To Helen” is the poem I was asked to read by Edgar Allan Poe. Tonal accents, included in intonation, are used to highlight important information in an utterance. In the sentence, "on the desperate seas long wont to sail", "desperate" is an important word that the reader should focus on, which can emphasize the anxiety and desperation of sailors at sea, and Helen can make them have the feeling of go home, is the contrast of his beautiful face. Furthermore, “phrase tones usually involve changes in fundamental frequency and occur at the end of a phrase.” The phrase “Your hyacinth hair, your classical face, your Naiad airs have brought me home” is “a longer utterance,” which “is broken up into smaller sentences” (Fasold & Connor-Linton, 2006). When the reciter reads this sentence, the pitch first decreases and then increases again. This is what Fasold and Connor-Linton call “a continuation surge” (Fasold & Connor-Linton, 2006), which indicates that the reciter has not finished speaking. That is, the narrator's intonation should vary with the punctuation of the poem, so that he can express the love in the words. The mental image of Elena in people's minds is different, and falls into the field of semantics. “The mental images of different people can be very different from each other without the.