poke only, etc.

From this epoch the lover no longer jests--no longer sees anything even
of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and feels the
"fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." This revolution of
thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar
one on the part of the reader--to bring the mind into a proper frame for
the _denouement_--which is now brought about as rapidly and as
_directly_ as possible.

With the _denouement_ proper--with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to
the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another
world--the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may
be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the limits
of the accountable--of the real. A raven having learned by rote the
single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its
owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek
admission at a window from which a light still gleams--the
chamber-window of a student, occupied half in pouring over a volume,
half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being
thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself
perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the
student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's
demeanor, demands of it, in jest and with out looking for a reply, its
name. The Raven addressed, answers with its customary word,
"Nevermore"--a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart
of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts
suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of
"Nevermore." The student now guesses the state of the case, but is
impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for
self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to
the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow
through the anticipated answer "Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the
extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its
first or obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has
been no overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an
array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness which
repels the artistical ey