Bab Bab 27 · THE VILLAGE STREET（5）

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of

ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" at the

conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length

about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object

_supremeness_ or perfection at all points, I asked myself--"Of all

melancholy topics what, according to the _universal_ understanding of

mankind, is the _most_ melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And

when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From

what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is

obvious--"When it most closely allies itself to _Beauty_; the death,

then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in

the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for

such topic are those of a bereaved lover."

I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased

mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word "Nevermore." I had

to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the

_application_ of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of

such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the word in

answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I saw at once

the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been depending,

that is to say, the effect of the _variation of application_. I saw that

I could make the first query propounded by the lover--the first query to

which the Raven should reply "Nevermore"--that I could make this first

query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still less, and

so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original

_nonchalance_ by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its

frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of

the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and

wildly propounds queries of a far different character--queries whose

solution he has passionately at heart--propounds them half in

superstition and half in that species of despair which delights in

self-torture--propounds them not altogether because he believes in the

prophetic or demoniac character of the bird (which reason assures him is

merely repeating a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a

frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the

_expected_ "Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable

of sorrow. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more

strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, I

first established in mind the climax or concluding query--that query to

which "Nevermore" should be in the last place an answer--that query in

reply to which this word "Nevermore" should involve the utmost

conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.

Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning, at the end where

all works of art should begin; for it was here at this point of my

preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of

the stanza:

"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,

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the

climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness,

and importance the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I

might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and

general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which

were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical

effect. Had I been able in the subsequent composition to construct more

vigorous stanzas, I should without scruple have purposely enfeebled them

so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect.

And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. My first

object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which this has been

neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable things in

the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere

_rhythm_, it is still clear that the possible varieties of metre and

stanza are absolutely infinite; and yet, for _centuries, no man, in

verse has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original

thing_. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual

force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or

intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and,

although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its

attainment less of invention than negation.

Of course I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or metre of

the "Raven." The former is trochaic--the latter is octametre

acatalectic, alternating with heptametre catalectic repeated in the

_refrain_ of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrametre

catalectic. Less pedantically, the feet employed throughout (trochees)

consists of a long syllable followed by a short; the first line of the

stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of seven and a half

(in effect two-thirds), the third of eight, the fourth of seven and a

half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these

lines taken individually has been employed before, and what originality

the "Raven" has, is in their _combinations into stanzas;_ nothing even

remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted. The

effect of this originality of combination is aided by other unusual and

some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the

application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration.

The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the

lover and the Raven--and the first branch of this consideration was the

_locale_. For this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a

forest, or the fields--but it has always appeared to me that a close

_circumscription of space_ is absolutely necessary to the effect of

insulated incident--it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an

indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention, and, of

course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place.

I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber--in a chamber

rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. The

room is represented as richly furnished--this in mere pursuance of the

ideas I have already explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole

true poetical thesis.

The _locale_ being thus determined, I had now to introduce the bird--and

the thought of introducing him through the window was inevitable. The

idea of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that the

flapping of the wings of the bird against the shutter, is a "tapping" at

the door, originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's

curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising from

the lover's throwing open the door, finding all dark, and thence

adopting the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that

knocked.

I made the night tempestuous, first to account for the Raven's seeking

admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the (physical)

serenity within the chamber.

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of

contrast between the marble and the plumage--it being understood that

the bust was absolutely _suggested_ by the bird--the bust of _Pallas_

being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the

lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself.

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of the force

of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression. For

example, an air of the fantastic--approaching as nearly to the ludicrous

as was admissible--is given to the Raven's entrance. He comes in "with

many a flirt and flutter."

Not the _least obeisance made he_--not a moment stopped or stayed he,

_But with mien of lord or lady_, perched above my chamber door.

In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously carried

out:

Then this ebony bird beguiling my _sad fancy_ into smiling

By the _grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore_,

"Though thy _crest be shorn and shaven_, thou," I said, "art sure no

craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore--

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore?"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled _this ungainly fowl_ to hear discourse so plainly,

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."

The effect of the dénouement being thus provided for, I immediately drop

the fantastic for a tone of the most profound seriousness--this tone

commencing in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, with

the line,

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc.

From this epoch the lover no longer jests--no longer sees anything even

of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim,

ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and feels the

"fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." This revolution of

thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar

one on the part of the reader--to bring the mind into a proper frame for

the _dénouement_--which is now brought about as rapidly and as

_directly_ as possible.

With the _dénouement_ proper--with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to

the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another

world--the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may

be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the limits

of the accountable--of the real. A raven having learned by rote the

single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its

owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek

admission at a window from which a light still gleams--the

chamber-window of a student, occupied half in pouring over a volume,

half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being

thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself

perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the

student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's

demeanor, demands of it, in jest and with out looking for a reply, its

name. The Raven addressed, answers with its customary word,

"Nevermore"--a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart

of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts

suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of

"Nevermore." The student now guesses the state of the case, but is

impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for

self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to

the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow

through the anticipated answer "Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the

extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its

first or obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has

been no overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an

array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness which

repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required--first,

some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly,

some amount of suggestiveness, some undercurrent, however indefinite of

meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art

so much of that _richness_ (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term)

which we are too fond of confounding with _the ideal_. It is the

_excess_ of the suggested meaning--it is the rendering this the upper

instead of the under current of theme--which turns into prose (and that

of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called

transcendentalists.

Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the

poem--their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative

which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first

apparent in the lines:

"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"

It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the

first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer,

"Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been

previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as

emblematical--but it is not until the very last line of the very last

stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of _Mournful and

never-ending Remembrance_ is permitted distinctly to be seen:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight 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!

* * * * *

OLD ENGLISH POETRY. [1]

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with

which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to

what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry--we mean to the simple

love of the antique--and that, again, a third of even the proper _poetic

sentiment_ inspired by their writings, should be ascribed to a fact

which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and

with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a

merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout

admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,

would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,

wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on

being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he

would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general

handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to

ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the

author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and

their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid

delight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one

source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a

very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems

_now_--we mean it only as against the poets _then_. There is a growing

desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless,

sincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general

error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of

supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth

and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end--with the

two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly

artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth--the

poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through

channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure

what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path

which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is

not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the

multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical verse" of Cowley is

but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he

was in this but a type of his _school_--for we may as well designate in

this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the

volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very

perceptible general character. They used little art in composition.

Their writings sprang immediately from the soul--and partook intensely

of that soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of

this _abandon_--to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind--but,

again, so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all

good things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility,

as to render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind

in such a school will be found inferior to those results in one

(_ceteris paribus_) more artificial.

We cannot bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the "Book of

Gems" are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearest possible

idea of the beauty of the _school_--but if the intention had been merely

to show the school's character, the attempt might have been considered

successful in the highest degree. There are long passages now before us

of the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond that of

their antiquity. The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please

us. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false. His

opinion, for example, of Sir Henry's Wotton's "Verses on the Queen of

Bohemia"--that "there are few finer things in our language," is

untenable and absurd.

In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of

Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time.

Here everything is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No

prepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no

other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of

poetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments,

stitched, apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, and

without even an attempt at adaptation.

In common with all the world, we have been much delighted with "The

Shepherd's Hunting" by Withers--a poem partaking, in a remarkable

degree, of the peculiarities of 'Il Penseroso'. Speaking of Poesy, the

author says:

"By the murmur of a spring,

Or the least boughs rustleling,

By a daisy whose leaves spread,

Shut when Titan goes to bed,

Or a shady bush or tree,

She could more infuse in me

Than all Nature's beauties con

In some other wiser man.

By her help I also now

Make this churlish place allow

Something that may sweeten gladness

In the very gall of sadness--

The dull loneness, the black shade,

That these hanging vaults have made

The strange music of the waves

Beating on these hollow caves,

This black den which rocks emboss,

Overgrown with eldest moss,

The rude portals that give light

More to terror than delight,

This my chamber of neglect

Walled about with disrespect;

From all these and this dull air

A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might

To draw comfort and delight."

But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the general

character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found

in Corbet's "Farewell to the Fairies!" We copy a portion of Marvell's

"Maiden lamenting for her Fawn," which we prefer--not only as a specimen

of the elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding in

pathos, exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness--to anything

of its species:

"It is a wondrous thing how fleet

'Twas on those little silver feet,

With what a pretty skipping grace

It oft would challenge me the race,

And when't had left me far away

'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;

For it was nimbler much than hinds,

And trod as if on the four winds.

I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown,

And lilies, that you would it guess

To be a little wilderness;

And all the spring-time of the year

It only loved to be there.

Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft where it should lie,

Yet could not, till itself would rise,

Find it, although before mine eyes.

For in the flaxen lilies shade

It like a bank of lilies laid;

Upon the roses it would feed

Until its lips even seemed to bleed,

And then to me 'twould boldly trip,

And print those roses on my lip,

But all its chief delight was still

With roses thus itself to fill,

And its pure virgin limbs to fold

In whitest sheets of lilies cold,

Had it lived long, it would have been

Lilies without, roses within."

How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable! It

pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words--over the

gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself--even

over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the

beauties and good qualities of her favorite--like the cool shadow of a

summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, "and all sweet flowers."

The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is

an idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the

artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her grief,

or the fragrance and warmth and _appropriateness_ of the little

nest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon

them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy

little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on

her face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought in

the few lines we have quoted--the _wonder_ of the little maiden at the

fleetness of her favorite--the "little silver feet"--the fawn

challenging his mistress to a race with "a pretty skipping grace,"

running on before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her

approach only to fly from it again--can we not distinctly perceive all

these things? How exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,

"And trod as if on the four winds!"

a vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of the

speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then

consider the garden of "my own," so overgrown, entangled with roses and

lilies, as to be "a little wilderness"--the fawn loving to be there, and

there "only"--the maiden seeking it "where it _should_ lie"--and not

being able to distinguish it from the flowers until "itself would

rise"--the lying among the lilies "like a bank of lilies"--the loving to

"fill itself with roses,"

"And its pure virgin limbs to fold

In whitest sheets of lilies cold,"

and these things being its "chief" delights--and then the pre-eminent

beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole

only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,

the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more

passionate admiration of the bereaved child:

"Had it lived long, it would have been

Lilies without, roses within."

[Footnote 1: "The Book of Gems." Edited by S. C. Hall.]

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