大鴉 — Edgar Allan Poe
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Raven Author : Edgar Allan Poe Commentator : Edmund Clarence Stedman Illustrator : Gustave Doré Release date : November 30, 2005 [eBook #17192] Most recently updated: December 13, 2020 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17192 Credits : Produced by Jason Isbell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. *** START OF STEDMAN NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1884 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. All rights reserved. Transcriber's Notes In the List of Illustrations I restored a missing single quote after Lenore! as shown below: "'Wretch,' I cried, 'thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!'" The List of Illustrations uses 'visitor' where the poem and the actual illustration use 'visiter'. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS With Names of Engravers Title-page, designed by Elihu Vedder. Frederick Juengling. "Nevermore." H. Claudius, G.J. Buechner. ANANKE. H. Claudius. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." R.A. Muller. "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor." R.G. Tietze. "Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore." H. Claudius. "Sorrow for the lost Lenore." W. Zimmermann. "For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore." Frederick Juengling. "''T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.'" W. Zimmermann. —"Here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more." H. Claudius. "Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." F.S. King. "'Surely,' said I, 'surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore.'" Frederick Juengling. "Open here I flung the shutter." T. Johnson. —"A stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he." R. Staudenbaur. "Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more." R.G. Tietze. "Wandering from the Nightly shore." Frederick Juengling. "Till I scarcely more than muttered, 'Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'" Frank French. "Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy." R. Schelling. "But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er She shall press, ah, nevermore!" George Kruell. "'Wretch,' I cried, 'thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!'" Victor Bernstrom. "On this home by Horror haunted." R. Staudenbaur. "'Tell me truly, I implore— Is there— is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!'" W. Zimmermann. "'Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'" F.S. King. "'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked, upstarting." W. Zimmermann. "'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!'" Robert Hoskin. "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!" R.G. Tietze. The secret of the Sphinx. R. Staudenbaur. COMMENT ON THE POEM. The secret of a poem, no less than a jest's prosperity, lies in the ear of him that hears it. Yield to its spell, accept the poet's mood: this, after all, is what the sages answer when you ask them of its value. Even though the poet himself, in his other mood, tell you that his art is but sleight of hand, his food enchanter's food, and offer to show you the trick of it,—believe him not. Wait for his prophetic hour; then give yourself to his passion, his joy or pain. "We are in Love's hand to-day!" sings Gautier, in Swinburne's buoyant paraphrase,—and from morn to sunset we are wafted on the violent sea: there is but one love, one May, one flowery strand. Love is eternal, all else unreal and put aside. The vision has an end, the scene changes; but we have gained something, the memory of a charm. As many poets, so many charms. There is the charm of Evanescence, that which lends to supreme beauty and grace an aureole of Pathos. Share with Landor his one "night of memories and of sighs" for Rose Aylmer, and you have this to the full. And now take the hand of a new-world minstrel, strayed from some proper habitat to that rude and dissonant America which, as Baudelaire saw, "was for Poe only a vast prison through which he ran, hither and thither, with the feverish agitation of a being created to breathe in a purer world," and where "his interior life, spiritual as a poet, spiritual even as a drunkard, was but one perpetual effort to escape the influence of this antipathetical atmosphere." Clasp the sensitive hand of a troubled singer dreeing thus his weird, and share with him the clime in which he found,—never throughout the day, always in the night,—if not the Atlantis whence he had wandered, at least a place of refuge from the bounds in which by day he was immured. To one land only he has power to lead you, and for one night only can you share his dream. A tract of neither Earth nor Heaven: "No-man's-land," out of Space, out of Time. Here are the perturbed ones, through whose eyes, like those of the Cenci, the soul