Page:The Raven (1884).pdf/11

10 burden or refrain which haunts the memory.—once heard, never forgotten, like the tone of a rarely used but distinctive organ-stop. Notable among them is Burger's "Lenore," that ghostly and resonant ballad, the lure and foil of the translators. Few will deny that Coleridge's wondrous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" stands at the very head "Le Juif-Errant" would have claims, had Beranger been a greater poet; and, but for their remoteness from popular sympathy, "The Lady of Shallot" and "The Blessed Damozel" might be added to the list. It was given to Edgar Allen Poe to produce two lyrics, "The Bells" and The Raven, each of which, although perhaps of less beauty than those of Tennyson and Rossetti, is a unique. "Ulalume", while equally strange and imaginative, has not the universal quality that is a portion of our test.

The Raven in sheer poetical constituents falls below such pieces as "The Haunted Palace", "The City in the Sea","The Sleeper" and "Israfel" The whole of it would be exchanged, I suspect by readers of a fastidious cast, for such passages as these:

It lacks the aerial melody of the poet whose heart-string are a lute:

But The Raven like the "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee" commends itself to the many and the few. I have said elsewhere that Poe's rarer productions seemed to me "those in which there is the appearance, at least, of spontaneity,—in which he yields to his feelings, while dying falls and cadences most musical, most melancholy come from him unawares." This is still my belief; and yet upon a fresh study of this poem, it impresses me more than at any time since my boyhood. Close acquaintance tells in favor of every true work of art. Induce the man, who neither knows art nor cares for it, to examine some poem or painting, and how soon its force takes hold of him! In fact, he will overrate the relative value of the first good work by which his attention has been fairly caught. The Raven, also, has consistent qualities which even an expert must admire. In no other of it's authors poems is the motive more palpably defined.. "The Haunted Palace" is just as definite to the select reader, but Poe scarcely would have taken that subtle allegory for bald analysis. The Raven is wholly occupied with the author's typical theme—the irretrievable loss of an idolized and beautiful woman; but on other grounds also, the public instinct is correct in thinking it his representative poem.

A man of genius usually gains a footing with the success of some one effort, and this not always his greatest. Recognition is the more instant for having been postponed. He does not acquire it, like a miser's fortune, coin after coin, but "not at all or all in all." And thus with other ambitions: the courtier, solider, actor,—whatever their parts,—each counts his triumph from some lucky stroke. Poe's Raven, despite augury, was for him "the bird that made the breeze to blow." The poet settles in New-York, in the winter of 1844-45, finding work upon Willis's paper "The Evening Mirror," and eking out his income by contributions elsewhere. For six years he had been an active writer, and enjoyed a professional reputation; was held in both respect and misconduct for his share in the ill-paid journalism of the day.He also had  done much of  his very best work—such tales as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," (the latter containing that mystical counterpart in verse, of Elihu's  Vedder's " A Lost Mind,") such analytic feats as "The Gold Bug" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget"  He had made proselytes abroad and, gained lasting hold upon the French mind. He had learned his power and weakness, and was at his prime, and not without a certain reputation. But he had written nothing that was on the tongue of everybody. To rare and delicate work some popular touch must be added to capture the general audience of one's own time.

Through the industry of Poe's successive biographers the hit made by The Raven has become an oft-told tale. The poet's young wife, Virigina,was fading before his eyes, but lingered for another year within death's shadow. The long low chamber in the house near the Bloomingdale Road is as