124 THE RAVEN IN POETRY AND FOLK-LORE 



" ' Many a one for him makes mane, 

 But nane sail ken where he is gane ; 

 O'er his white banes, when they are bare, 

 The wind sail blaw for evermair.' " 



While, if you wish to picture to yourself the bird 

 in its most grim, most weird, most shadowy, most 

 suggestive shape, go to Edgar Allan Poe, who, in 

 a poem which, if it had been his only one, must have 

 won for himself, as well as for his subject, a literary 

 immortality, has succeeded in doing for the raven, 

 very much what Coleridge had done for the 

 albatross in the Ancient Mariner. The raven 

 himself seems to stand before you in proprid 

 persona. You hear him " tapping, rapping," you 

 see him "sitting, sitting, never flitting," 



" On the pallid bust of Pallas 

 Just above the chamber door." 



You ponder in your inmost soul, the burden, half 

 revealed and half concealed, of his melancholy 

 refrain : " Never never more." 



" Then this ebony bird beguiling 

 My sad fancy into smiling 

 By the grave and stern decorum 

 Of the countenance it wore, 



