I fell in love with melancholy,
And used to throw my earthly rest
And quiet all away in jest—
I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath—
Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,
Were stalking between her and me.
⋮
But now my soul hath too much room—
Gone are the glory and the gloom—
The black hath mellow’d into gray,
And all the fires are fading away.
My draught of passion hath been deep—
I revell’d, and I now would sleep—
And after drunkenness of soul
Succeeds the glories of the bowl—
An idle longing night and day
To dream my very life away.
But dreams—of those who dream as I,
Aspiringly, are damned, and die:
Yet should I swear I mean alone,
By notes so very shrilly blown,
To break upon Time’s monotone,
While yet my vapid joy and grief
Are tintless of the yellow leaf—
Why not an imp the graybeard hath,
Will shake his shadow in my path—
And e’en the graybeard will o’erlook
Connivingly my dreaming-book.
And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.
—Koran.
“To Helen” first appeared in the volume, as did also “The Valley of Unrest” (as “The Valley Nis”), “Israfel,” and one or two others of the youthful pieces. ↩
“The Raven” was first published on the , in the New York Evening Mirror—a paper its author was then assistant editor of. It was prefaced by the following words, understood to have been written by N. P. Willis: “We are permitted to copy (in advance of publication) from the second number of the American Review, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’ It is one of those ‘dainties bred in a book’ which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.” In the February number of the American Review the poem was published as by “Quarles,” and it was introduced by the following note, evidently suggested if not written by Poe himself.
“The following lines from a correspondent—besides the deep, quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author—appears to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, having been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the language. While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of ‘The Raven’ arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. In regard to its measure, it may be noted that if all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form; but the presence in all the others of one line—mostly the second in the verse” (stanza?)—“which flows continuously, with only an aspirate pause in the middle, like that before the short line in the Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of sound with any part besides, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language in prosody were better understood.”
—Ed. Am. Rev.
“To F⸺” (Frances Sargeant Osgood) appeared in the Broadway Journal for . These lines are but slightly varied from those inscribed “To Mary,” in the Southern Literary Messenger for , and subsequently republished, with the two stanzas transposed, in Graham’s Magazine for , as “To One Departed.” ↩
“A Valentine,” one of three poems addressed to Mrs. Osgood, appears to have been written early in .
To discover the names in this poem read the first letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth and so on to the end. ↩
This poem was first published in Colton’s American Review for , as “To ⸻ ⸻. Ulalume: A Ballad.” Being reprinted immediately in the Home Journal, it was copied into various publications with the name of the editor, N. P. Willis, appended, and was ascribed to him. When first published, it contained the following additional stanza which Poe subsequently, at the suggestion of Mrs. Whitman, wisely suppressed:
Said we then—we two, then—“Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up our path and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds—
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls—
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls?”
The bibliographical history of “The Bells” is curious. The subject, and some lines of the original version, having been suggested by the poet’s friend, Mrs. Shew, Poe, when he wrote out the first draft of the poem, headed it, “The Bells, By Mrs. M. A. Shew.” This draft, now the editor’s property, consists of only seventeen lines, and read thus:
I
The bells!—ah, the bells!
The little silver bells!
How fairy-like a melody there floats
From their throats—
From their merry little
