Eldorado

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—

And o’er his heart a shadow—

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—

‘Shadow,’ said he,

‘Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?’

‘Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,’

The shade replied,—

‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

Edgar Allen Poe

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Even the masters occasionally wrote doggerel. It is interesting to me that this extremely minor work of Poe, was apparently an inspiration for a piece of 20th Century cultural gold. An iconic western movie directed by Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, with James Caan, Charlene Holt, and Michele Carey came out in 1966, entitled El Dorado (two words in the movie title, spelled as one word by Poe).

The reason that I say "apparently an inspiration" for the movie, is that the Robert Mitchum character actually quotes the above poem in not one but two different scenes of that movie. Even if your streaming service won't call that nugget up, you can play it from YouTube, last I checked. The presence of such wonderful popular art on YouTube, strictly legal or not, is a officially a Great Thing in my book. Our children and their children have access to some of the best popular art of the Twentieth Century, gone now and never to return.