CLASS II. AVES: ORDER 2. PASSERES. 



19'i 



THE RAVEN. 



yet, when the prophet Elijah provoked the enmity of Ahab, by prophesying against him, and hid 

 himself by the Brook Cherith, the ravens were appointed by heaven to bring him his daily food. 

 But, though thus honored, this bird seems in all ages to have been considered ominous of evil. 

 In the days of auguries and divination, it was used by the priests as the instrument of foretelling 

 future events, and all its actions, its flight, and every modulation of its croakings, were watcbed 

 as the awful suggestions of prophecy. In most cases, the managers of these oracles were impos- 

 tors, using them only as means of gaining an ascendency over the people; the latter, however, 

 were real believers, and in some cases their credulity was so great that individuals ate the heart 

 and entrails of the raven, under the idea that its prophetic faculty would thus pass into their pos- 

 session ! Taking advantage of the superstitions which even yet are associated with the raven, 

 the poet Poe lias produced a poem to which this bird gives title, and which, by its spectral images, 

 produces a striking effect on the imagination : 



" Open here I flung my shutter. 

 When, with many a flirt and flutter. 

 In there stepp'd a stately raven 



Of the saintly days of yore : 

 Not the least obeisance made he, 

 Not an instant stopp'd or staid he, 

 But, with mien of lord or lady, 



Perched above my chamber door — 

 Perched upon a bust of Pallas, 



Just above my chamber door; 



Perched and sat, and nothing more. 



" Then this ebon bird beguiling 

 My sad fancy into smiling, 

 By the grim 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 rav«n, ' Nevermore !' 



^"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 — 

 Leave my loneliness unbroken, 



Quit the bust above my door; 

 Take thy beak from out my heart. 



And take thy form from oft' my door'- 



Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore!'" 



There is perhaps no bird more widely distributed over the surface of the globe than the raven. 

 A British writer says it "croaks as gravely as with ourselves on the shores of the Black and Cas- 



