THE SHADOW OF POE'S RAVEN.

To the New York Times Saturday Review:

"In answer to the criticism on this line, that the lamp would not throw the shadow of the bird on the floor, Poe says: 'My conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as is often seen in the English palaces, and even in some of the better houses of New York.' 10, 1901.)

THE RAVEN. BY - QUARLES.

American Whig Review, February, 1845:—

(June

"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

- appear 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, have 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 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 beside, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language, in prosody, were better understood."-ED. AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW.

THEORIES AS TO THE COMPOSITION OF THE RAVEN.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

1. It was drafted in the summer of 1842, at the Barhyte Trout-Ponds, Saratoga Springs, New York. This theory rests upon Dr. Griffis' report of what he recollected his wife said. See Home Journal, Nov. 5th, 1884.

2.

It was written in the winter of 1843-44, when Poe was in want.

This theory rests upon the unsustained testimony of Mr. Rosenbach.

3.

It was dashed off one night while Poe was living at Fordham (1844-45). See Fairfield, Scribner's Magazine for October, 1875. This is manifestly impossible Poe did not move to Fordham until the spring of 1846.

:

4. According to Col. DuSolle it was written piecemeal, stanza by stanza, and criticised by his literary contemporaries, who assembled at Sandy Webb's in Ann Street.

5.

It was written in the office of John R. Thompson while Thompson was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger (between 1847-1849). This theory,

which is obviously incorrect, is circumstantially described in a personal letter to Charles W. Kent from Mr. James K. Galt, the great-nephew of John Allan, the fosterfather of Poe.

6. For Poe's own theory see his “ Philosophy of Composition," and the "Outis" controversy.

FORM OF THE POEM.

It is a melancholy, melodramatic, reflective lyric of love and sorrow. Its metrical form is at first glance trochaic octameter, but in reality it seems to be a fourtime tetrameter verse. There are eighteen stanzas of five lines each, with a refrain. The rime order is abcbb, dbebb, fbgbb, etc. There is also internal rime in the 1st and 3rd lines. The refrain rimes with the last line of the stanza. There is much peculiar use of alliteration, the trills r and I, and the so-called "long" a and o.

Ingram's and Stedman's monographs on "The Raven " contain interesting historical and metrical discussions, translations, imitations, parodies, etc. The attempt by Col. J. A. Joyce to trace "The Raven" to an Italian original published in the Milan Art Journal for 1809 and called "The Parrot " by one Leo Penzoni - has failed for lack of a reproduction of the Italian version and other authenticating data.

TO M. L. S

Page 101.

HOME JOURNAL, MARCH 13, 1847.

Text, Home Journal. (Kindly furnished by its present editor, Mr. Dix.)

EDITOR'S NOTE.

This blank verse lyric is without real poetic merit. N. P. Willis, editor of the Home Journal, introduced this poem in the following words :

“The following seems said over a hand clasped in the speaker's two. It is by Edgar A. Poe, and is evidently the pouring out of a very deep feeling of gratitude.”

See Vol. I. for the circumstances surrounding this poem to Mrs. Marie Louise Shew whose nursing probably saved Poe from death. Cf. "To Marie Louise."

ULALUME.

Page 102.

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW (Sub-title, “To ———”), DECEMBER, 1847; HOME JOURNAL, JANUARY 1, 1848; GRISWOLD, 1850.

Text, Griswold, 1850.

The poem as now printed contains 9 stanzas ; but the American Whig Review and the Home Journal versions contained a tenth stanza, as follows:

Said we, then - the two, then-"Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls,

The pitiful, the merciless ghouls

To bar up our way and to ban it

From the secret that lies in these wolds

From the thing that lies hidden 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?

American Whig Review and Home Journal. Variations from the Griswold text.

III. 9 We remembered.

VIII. 5 And (But).

IX. 13 In the (This).

From Fordham Poe wrote to Willis, Editor of the Home Journal, Dec. 8, 1847, as follows:

"I send you an American Review · the number just issued in which is a ballad by myself, but published anonymously. It is called Ulalume' — the page is turned down. I do not care to be known as its author just now; but would take it as a great favor if you

would copy it in the Home Journal, with a word of inquiry as to who wrote it :-provided always that you think the poem worth the room it would occupy in your paper — a matter about which I am by no means sure."

Willis printed the poem with the following comment : "We do not know how many readers we have who will enjoy, as we do, the following exquisitely piquant and skilful exercise of variety and niceness of language. It is a poem which we find in the American Review, full of beauty and oddity in sentiment and versification, but a curiosity (and a delicious one, we think) in philologic flavor. Who is the author?"

EDITOR'S NOTE.

In artistic marks this poem is well worth a close study. Its effects of rime, repetition, parallelism, assonance, etc., are interesting.

ΤΟ

Page 106.

COLUMBIAN MAGAZINE, MARCH, 1848.

Text, Griswold.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

The writer of these lines had contended that no thought need lack for expression, but now his thoughts of her not even Israfel could utter (see the poem “Israfel"). He cannot speak, think, or feel, for he sees only her. This poem is a blank verse tribute to Mrs. Shew.