Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the
poem- their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the
narrative which has preceded them. The under-current of meaning is
rendered first apparent in the line-
"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore!"
It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the
first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer,
"Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been
previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as
emblematical- but it is not until the very last line of the very
last stanza that the intention of making him emblematical of
Mournful and never ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be
seen:
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 demon that is dreaming,
And the lamplight 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.
THE RATIONALE OF VERSE
THE WORD "Verse" is here used not in its strict or primitive
sense, but as the term most convenient for expressing generally and
without pedantry all that is involved in the consideration of
rhythm, rhyme, metre, and versification.
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