ce a change of pain.
I leaned my head against the casement, where
The rose she planted wreathed its clustering flowers.
How could it bloom when she was in the grave?
The birds were carolling on every spray,
And every leaf glittered with perfumed dew;
Nature was full of joy, but, wretched man!
Does God indeed bless only birds and flowers?
As thus I stood--the glowing morn without,
Within, the Raven with its blighting cry,
All light the world, all gloom the hopeless heart--
I prayed in agony, if not in faith;
Yet still my saddened heart refused to soar,
And even summer winds the burden bore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never--nevermore!'

With these wild accents ringing through my heart,
There was no hope in prayer! Sadly I rose,
Gazing on Nature with an envious eye,
When, lo! a snowy Dove, weaving her rings
In ever-lessening circles, near me came;
With whirring sound of fluttering wings, she passed
Into the cursed and stifling, haunted room,
Where sat the Raven with his voice of doom--
His ceaseless cry from the Plutonian shore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never--nevermore!'

The waving of the whirring, snowy wings,
Cooled the hot air, diffusing mystic calm.
Again I shuddered as I marked the glare
Which shot from the fell Raven's fiendish eye,
The while he measured where his pall-like swoop
Might seize the Dove as Death had seized Lenore:
'Lenore!' he shrieked, 'ah, never--nevermore!'

Hovered the Dove around an antique cross,
Which long had stood afront the pallid bust
Of haughty Pallas o'er my chamber door:
Neglected it had been through all the storm
Of maddening doubts born from the demon cry
Reechoing from the night's Plutonian shore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never--nevermore!'

I loved all heathen, antique, classic lore,
And thus the cross had paled before the brow
Of Pallas, radiant type of Reason's power.
But human reason fails in hours of woe,
And wisdom's goddess ne'er reopes the grave.
What knows chill Pallas of corruption's doom?
Upon her massive, rounded, glittering brow
The Bird of Doubt had chos'n a fitting place
To knell into my heart forever more:
'Ah I never, nevermore! Lenore! Lenore!'

The Raven's plumage, in the kindling rays,
Shone with metallic lustre, sombre fire;
His fiendish eye, so blue, and fi