Eldorado (poem)

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.

"[6] Like the subject of the poem, Poe was on a quest for success or happiness and, despite spending his life searching for it, he eventually loses his strength and faces death.

[6] John Cullen Gruesser similarly notes that the poem depicts Poe's unrealized dream of wealth and fame as a writer.

In 1993 Eldorado, along with "Hymn" and "Evening Star", was adapted by Jonathan Adams as Three Songs from Edgar Allan Poe for SATB chorus and piano.

[citation needed] In 1903, the American writer Ridgely Torrence published his drama El Dorado: A Tragedy, with lines from Poe's poem as an epigraph.

[citation needed] In the 1990 movie Young Guns 2, Kiefer Sutherland's character, Josiah "Doc" Scurlock was heard reciting the last stanza for a prostitute and claiming to have written the poem himself.

[citation needed] In 2017, Mad Duck recorded a version of "Eldorado" in the album Braggart stories and dark poems.