Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/23

 Rh of the heroine's name from Isadore into Lenore no words need be wasted.

But the ballad of "Isadore" contains no allusion to the "ghastly grim and ancient Raven"—the ominous bird whose croaking voice and melancholy "nevermore" has found an echo in so many hearts. Where then did Poe obtain this sable, sombre auxiliary, the pretext, at he tells us, for the natural and continuous repetition of the refrain? Observing the difficulty of inventing a plausible reason for this continuous repetition, he did not fail to perceive, is his declaration, "that this difficulty arose solely from the presumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being. I did not fail to perceive, in short," is his remark, "that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and, very naturally, a parrot in the first instance suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone."

Now it will be recalled to mind that Pike was not only the author of a well-known Ode to The Mocking Bird, but that in his poem of Isadore, which has already served us so well, is the line—

"The mocking-bird sits still and sings a melancholy strain."

Poe would naturally desire to avoid introducing any direct allusion to the mocking-bird of his contemporary—which, indeed he had already noticed in print—even if that creature had been capable of enacting the