Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/29

 Rh analyzed and all the suggested sources scrutinized what a wealth of imagination and a power of words remain the unalienable property of Poe—this builder of "pyramids for immortality."

Every poem must have been suggested by something, but how rarely do suggestions—whence-so-ever drawn—from Nature or Art—culminate in works so magnificent as this—the melodious apotheosis of Melancholy! This splendid consecration of unforgetful, undying sorrow!

As has already been pointed out Poe made no claim to originality as regarded either the rhythm or the metre of the Raven: the measures of each of the lines composing the stanzas of his poem had been often used before, but to cite his own words with respect to this feature of the work, "what originality the Raven has, is in their combination into stanza, nothing even remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted. The effect of this originality of combination is," as he justly claims, "aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration."

This is, indeed, a modest method of placing before his public the markedly original variations from known and well-worn forms of versification. "The possible varieties of metre and stanza are," as Poe remarks, "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" asserts the poet "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