Scanning Poe's "Romance" (Catherine)

Catherine writes (in part--the rest of her response is under "comments" to "Greetings from Poe-sylvania"):
I think the poem that I scanned .. . .(“Romance” by Edgar Allan Poe has a meter that, I think, is mostly iambic tetrameter.
[Yes!]
However, Poe deviates from this meter, most likely, to emphasize certain words. The word “Romance” in the first line is a trochee and therefore is emphasized as it is the subject of the poem.
[Yes!]
In line four, the last two syllables of “shadowy” and “lake” make an anapest. I’m not clear as to why Poe emphasizes “shadowy lake” however.
[This deviation--it could be an anapest, or it could just be an elision of shad'wy--isn't necessarily emphasized. Remember, some deviations from the "backbeat" of the overall metrical pattern may be meaningful, and others may not be. ]

In line eight “ear/liest word/” is another anapest which draws attention to the speaker’s early love for, presumably, romantic poetry and its enriching influence on his vocabulary as a boy.
[Yes, and I'd add to this that there's an internal assonance, a sound resemblance, here too: ear-ly wor-d. [early bird?!] Here is a good place to add to metrical analysis the MEANING CLUSTER attached to this moment in the poem. It's about being a poet, being someone who loves to handle words, who longs to "whittle away" time with "lyre and rhyme." A paroquet/parakeet taught him words as a child (now that's suggestive! trained birds just repeat monotonous sounds, don't they?).]

In line twelve, the words “ver/ry heaven/” seems to form an amphibrach with the “ry” in “very” is an unstressed syllable, the “hea” in heaven is stressed, and the “ven” at the end of heaven is unstressed. I’m not sure about the amphibrach though, because this kind of meter is supposed to be rare, I might not be scanning it correctly.
[Again, probably more likely an elision--"Heavn" as one syllable--to the 19c ear.]

However, the emphasis on heaven draws attention to the power and the influence that the “condor years” have on the speaker, because they can “shake the very heaven on high.” The “condor years” could possibly be a metonymy for the serious and even stressful wearing on of the speaker’s life. In addition, Poe seems to use the parakeet as a metonymy for the idea of romantic poetry.
["Condor years" is really the most striking figure here. There's some contrast going on with parakeet vs. condor, childhood vs. "tumultuous" adulthood. Presumably it has something to do with the contrasting size of the two birds suggesting the magnitude of childhood's cares vs. adulthood's cares.]

Finally, in line sixteen, “an hour” might be another example of an amphibrach with “an” as an unstressed syllable, “hou” in the word hour is stressed, and the last “r” syllable of “hour” is unstressed.
["hour" is only one syllable long, technically]
This draws attention to “hour” as a short period of time that has “calmer wings” as opposed to the “condor years,” in lines 11-12, characterized as birds of prey that shake the heavens “With tumult as they thunder by.” An hour is less harshly depicted than a year and an hour is emphasized because it is during this time that Poe’s speaker is allowed to spend “That little time with lyre and rhyme” and allow his heart to “tremble with the strings” of what I interpret to be the composition of romantic poetry (lines 18 and 21). Poe clearly constructed the meter, appearance, and imagery of this poem to emphasize certain important aspects of his poem.
[OK, and here's when--in a longer paper--you'd float up from these relatively small details into the skies of Why It All Matters: the two time-frames, the two emblematic birds, the two different ways of living one's life, in leisure or in stress. Do you sense loss here, or anger? Why should it be a "crime" to spend one's time with words and rhymes?]