Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked, upstarting 'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

IOC

Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the Raven' Nevermore.'

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 de

mon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light 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!1

1842-44?

EULALIE

--

I DWELT alone

In a world of moan,

1845.

And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

1 In the concluding stanza. . . I convert him [the raven] into an allegorical emblem or personification of Mournful Remembrance, out of the Shadow of which the poet is lifted nevermore.' (PoE, Works, vol. xii, p. 75.)

THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was vol-
canic

As the scoriac rivers that roll As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek In the ultimate climes of the pole That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

20

But our thoughts they were palsied and

sere

Our memories were treacherous and

sere

2 Poe's child-wife Virginia died in January of 1847, and this poem was published in December. See the biographical sketch.

years ago:

I SAW thee once- once only
I must not say how many - but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own
soul, soaring,

Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,

1 The occasion of Poe's first sight of Mrs. Whitman is romantically described as follows:

'Poe caught a glimpse of a white figure wandering in a moonlit garden in Providence, on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near midnight, he wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterwards in one of his most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion.' (Harrison's Life of Poe, p. 284.) See also Mrs. Whitman's Poems, and Woodberry's Life of Poe, pp. 308325.

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

His

1 It was shortly after this, during the summer, that Poe wrote the first rough draft of The Bells,' at Mrs. Shew's residence. One day he came in,' she records, and said, "Marie Louise, I have to write a poem; I have no feeling, no sentiment, no inspiration." hostess persuaded him to have some tea. It was served in the conservatory, the windows of which were open, and admitted the sound of neighboring church bells. Mrs. Shew said, playfully, Here is paper;' but the poet, declining it, declared, 'I so dislike the noise of bells to-night, I cannot write. I have no subject -I am exhausted.' The lady then took up the pen, and, pretending to mimic his style, wrote, "The Bells, by E. A. Poe;' and then in pure sportiveness, The Bells, the little silver Bells,' Poe finishing off the stanza. She then suggested for the next verse, The heavy iron

What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

Bells; and this Poe also expanded into a stanza. He next copied out the complete poem, and headed it, ' By Mrs. M. L. Shew,' remarking that it was her poem, as she had suggested and composed so much of it. (INGRAM, Life of Poe.)

Such was the beginning of the poem; its development is described by the editor of Sartain's Union Magazine, a month after it was first published: 'This poem came into our possession about a year since. It then consisted of eighteen lines! They were as follows:

THE BELLS-A SONG
The bells! hear the bells!

The merry wedding-bells !
The little silver bells!

How fairy-like a melody there swells

From the silver tinkling cells Of the bells, bells, bells!

Of the bells!

The bells-ah, the bells !
The heavy iron bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells!
Hear the knells!

How horrible a monody there floats
From their throats-

From their deep-toned throats!

How I shudder at the notes

From the melancholy throats

Of the bells, bells, bells !

Of the bells!

About six months after this we received the poem enlarged and altered nearly to its present size and form; and about three months since, the author sent another alteration and enlargement, in which condition the poem was left at the time of his death.'

Professor Woodberry suggests that Poe probably had the idea of his poem in mind for some time before Mrs. Shew induced him to begin writing it, and remarks on his frequent reference to the magical sound of bells throughout his literary life.' (Life of Poe, pp. 302-304.) He also quotes a striking parallel passage from Chateaubriand's Génie du Christianisme.

What a tale of terror, now their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright! 4.
Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor
Now now to sit, or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon. 50
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows; 60 Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells

Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamor and the clanging of the

bells!

Is a groan.

And the people - ah, the people
They that dwell up in the steeple, 80
All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone
They are neither man nor woman
They are neither brute nor human
They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls:
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pean of the bells:
Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells

To the sobbing of the bells: Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells Of the bells, bells, bells :

90

100

I IO

Sadly, I know

I am shorn of my strength, And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length
But no matter! - I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing At heart:ah that horrible, Horrible throbbing!

1849.

ΤΟ

20

2 See Harrison's Life of Poe, pp. 301, 302; and chapters xi and xii of the Letters, especially pp. 342344, the letter of March 23, 1849, quoted also in Ingram's Life of Poe. In this letter was enclosed the poem, of which Poe says: 'I think the lines" For Annie" much the best I have ever written.'

The last two lines of the first stanza were suggested by Longfellow as an inscription for the monument tardily erected over Poe's grave in 1875.