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POEMS.
ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
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“ ’T is some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this and nothing more.” [page 2:]
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
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From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore,
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore:
Nameless here for evermore. [page 3:]
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
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So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“ ’T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
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“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you” — here I opened wide the door: —
Darkness there and nothing more.
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Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore:”
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Merely this and nothing more. [page 4:]
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore;
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Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore:
’T is the wind and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
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But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door:
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, —
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“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, [page 5:]
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore:
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Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
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Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
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Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
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But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
Till I scarcely more than muttered, — “Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
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Then the bird said, “Nevermore.” [page 6:]
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
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Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore:
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Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never — nevermore.’ ”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore,
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What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
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This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
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On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, [page 7:]
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
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Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
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Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
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“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore;
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Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”
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Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” [page 8:]
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore,
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Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore:
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Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!”
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Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting:
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
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Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door!
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Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; [page 9:]
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And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!
[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 1, running to the bottom of page 2:]
* The Raven was first formally published in the American Whig Review for February, 1845, but had been copied by permission in the Evening Mirror for January 29, of the same year. Later in the year it was the title poem of a volume containing most of Poe's work in verse. Many stories are told with regard to the circumstances of its composition, none of which deserves much more credence than Poe's own account in his Philosophy of Composition, which, if taken literally, would prove the poem to be little more than a tour de force. Poe did probably apply, in a semi-conscious way, certain principles of style and versification that he had partly developed for himself, and he may have owed something to an obscure poet named Chivers, over and above what he owed Coleridge and Mrs. Browning; but, when all is said, the world has not been wrong in regarding The Raven as a highly original and powerfully moving poem, and in according it a popularity second only to that which it has long granted to Gray's Elegy, Like the Elegy, [page 2:] The Raven does not in all probability represent the highest reaches of its author's art (there are lines in Israfel, in the lyric To Helen, and in the exquisite stanzas To One in Paradise that are unmatched in The Raven), but the felicitous moralizing of the one poem and the dramatic interest and weird intensity of the other, abundantly justify the public in its preferences. Poe's art, too, if not seen at its highest in The Raven, receives therein its most adequate and characteristic expression outside of Ulalume, which the public has never taken quite seriously. The student may be referred to a chapter in Professor C. A. Smith's Repetition and Parallelism in English Verse for full details with regard to style. Professor Smith brings out admirably Poe's kinship with the balladists, and gives a satisfactory account of his use of that time-honored poetic artifice, the repetend, — an artifice which is as plainly seen in the
Abstineas avidas, Mors precor atra, manus.
Abstineas, Mors atra, precor,
of Tibullus (El. I, iii.) as in any stanza of The Raven.
10. Bürger wrote a ballad of Lenore from which Poe may have got this name. The idea of celebrating, whether in verse or in melancholy sentiment, the death of a beautiful young woman seems to have been with him from boyhood, and in his manhood he maintained that such a subject “is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” It was so for him, at any rate, both in his verse and in his prose-poems such as Ligeia and Eleonora.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 4:]
45. By this and other touches Poe intended, as he tells us, to give his verses, for the sake of contrast, “an air of the fantastic, approaching as nearly to the ludicrous as was admissible.” That the Raven, though shorn like a monk, was no coward is made evident by his cavalier entrance into an unknown place.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 5:]
47. Pluto was god of Hades — of the infernal regions — hence the epithet conveys the ideas of darkness and mystery. Cf . Horace, Carm, I, iv.: “Et domus exilis Plutonia.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 5, running to the bottom of page 6:]
49. Ravens make very intelligent pets (cf. Barnaby Rudge) and can be taught to imitate speech somewhat. As an omen of ill fortune the bird figures frequently in English literature from [page 6:] the time of the Anglo Saxon poets, who continually refer to it in their martial verses.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 6:]
64. Burden = refrain.
76. That is, cast a sidelong ray over, — unless Poe wished to [page 7:] attribute to the light some furtive or sinister character. From any point of view the use of the word is rather questionable.
83. Nepenthe, a “sorrow-dispelling” drink mentioned in the Odyssey (iv. 219-30). Cf. Comus, ll. 676-6: —
“That Nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena.”
89. Balm in Gilead. See Century Dictionary and of Jeremiah viii. 22: “Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?”
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 8:]
93. Aidenn, some distant place of pleasure, — Eden or Aden, of which it is a fanciful variant.
96. Poe tells us in his curious account of the evolution of his poem that this stanza was the first that he wrote out.
101. “It will he observed,” says Poe, “that the words ‘from out my heart’ involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. . . . The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical” [“of Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance”].
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - WPT97, 1897 and 1898] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Editions - The Raven (W. P. Trent, 1897 and 1898)