There was a ringing in my ears,
And both my eyes gushed out with tears.
Surely all pleasant things had gone before,
Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, No More!"
The other poem, entitled Anacreontic, contains the name of Lenora. "It is not suggested," says the writer, "that Poe took from these verses more than the name Lenora or Lenore, and the burden 'Never More.' The connection of the two in The Raven renders all but certain that the author had come across the book in which the poems appear."
Whether or no Poe ever saw The Gem for 1831, is almost immaterial to inquire, but that so common a poetic phrase as "No More" supplied him, fourteen years later, with his melancholy burden of "Never More" no one can believe. In truth, for many years "No More" had been a favorite refrain with Poe: in his poem To One in Paradise, the publication of which is traceable back to July, 1835, is the line,
"No more—no more—no more!"
In the sonnet To Zante, published in January, 1837, the sorrowful words occur five times,
"No more! alas, that magical sad sound
Transforming all!"
whilst in the sonnet To Silence, published in April, 1840, "No More" again plays a leading part. The first at least of these three poems there is good reason to believe had been written as early as 1832 or 1833. As regards Poe's favorite name of Lenore, an early use of it may be pointed out in his poem entitled "Lenore," published in the Pioneer for 1842, the germ of the said poem having been first published in 1831.
We are now about to touch more solid ground. In 1843 Edgar Poe appears to have been writing for The New Mirror, a New York periodical edited by his two acquaintances, G. P. Morris and N. P. Willis. In the number for October the 14th appeared some verses entitled Isadore: they were by Albert Pike, the author of an Ode to The Mocking Bird and other pieces once well-known. In an editorial note by Willis, it was stated that Isadore had been written by its author "after sitting up late at study,—the thought of losing her who slept near him at his toil having suddenly crossed his mind in the stillness of midnight."
Here we have a statement which must have met Poe's gaze, and which establishes the first coincidence between the poems of Pike and of The Raven's author: both write a poem lamenting a lost love when, in fact, neither the one has lost his "Isadore" nor the other his "Lenore":—the grief is fictitious. In The Philosophy of Composition Poe states that he selected for the theme of his projected poem, "a lover lamenting his deceased mistress." Pike, we are told by Willis, in the statement certainly seen by Poe, wrote his lines "in the stillness of midnight," "after sitting up late at study," and the initial stanza of The Raven begins,—
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume."
The key-note has been struck, and all that follows is in due sequence. Poe, in his Philosophy of Composition, says that when he had determined upon writing his poem, "with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy" in its construction, "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn," he did not fail to at once notice that of all the usual effects, or points, adopted by writers of verse, "no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment," he declared "sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis." Now it may be noticed in passing that the refrain was neither universal—nor common, save with ballad makers—up to Poe's days, and that either of those attributes would have sufficed to repel him—whose search was ever after the outré—the bizarre. But the truth was Poe found as the most distinctive—the only salient—feature in his contemporary's poem the refrain,
"Thou art lost to me forever, Isadore."
Naturally, Poe's genius impelled him to improve upon the simple repetend: "I considered it," he says, "with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity—of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain—the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried.
"These points being settled," continues Poe, "I next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence would of course be the facility of the variation. This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.
"The question now arose," pursues the poet, "as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant.
"The sound of the refrain being thus determined it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search," avers Poe, "it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word 'Nevermore.' In fact it was the very first which presented itself."
Thus the author of The Raven would lead his readers to believe that he was irresistibly impelled to select for his refrain the word "Nevermore," but, evidently, there are plenty of eligible words in the English language both embodying the long sonorous o in connection with r as the most producible consonant, and of sorrowful import. A perusal of Pike's poem, however, rendered it needless for Poe to seek far for the needed word, for, not only does the refrain to Isadore contain the antithetic word to never, and end with the ōre syllable, but in one line of the poem are "never" and "more," and in others the words "no more," "evermore," and "for ever more"; quite sufficient, all must admit, to have supplied the analytic mind of our poet with what he needed.
Thus far the theme, the refrain, and the word selected for the refrain, have been somewhat closely paralleled in the poem by Pike, whilst over the transmutation of the heroine's name from Isadore into Lenore no words need be wasted.
But the ballad of "Isadore" contains no allusion to the "ghastly grim and ancient Raven"—the ominous bird whose croaking voice and melancholy "nevermore" has found an echo in so many hearts. Where then did Poe obtain this sable, sombre auxiliary, the pretext, at he tells us, for the natural and continuous repetition of the refrain? Observing the difficulty of inventing a plausible reason for this continuous repetition, he did not fail to perceive, is his declaration, "that this difficulty arose solely from the presumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being. I did not fail to perceive, in short," is his remark, "that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and, very naturally, a parrot in the first instance suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone."
Now it will be recalled to mind that Pike was not only the author of a well-known Ode to The Mocking Bird, but that in his poem of Isadore, which has already served us so well, is the line—
"The mocking-bird sits still and sings a melancholy strain."
Poe would naturally desire to avoid introducing any direct allusion