Escaped across the Styx, from "the Night's
Plutonian shore," he seems the imaged soul of the questioner himself,--of
him who can not, will not, quaff the kind nepenthe, because the memory of
Lenore is all that is left him, and with the surcease of his sorrow even
that would be put aside.
_The Raven_ also may be taken as a representative poem of its author, for
its exemplification of all his notions of what a poem should be. These are
found in his essays on "The Poetic Principle," "The Rationale of Verse,"
and "The Philosophy of Composition." Poe declared that "in Music, perhaps,
the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the
Poetic Sentiment, it struggles--the creation of supernal Beauty.... Verse
cannot be better designated than as an inferior or less capable music"; but
again, verse which is really the "Poetry of Words" is "The Rhythmical
Creation of Beauty,"--this and nothing more. The _tone_ of the highest
Beauty is one of Sadness. The most melancholy of topics is Death. This must
be allied to Beauty. "The death, then, of a beautiful woman is,
unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,--and equally is it
beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a
bereaved lover." These last expressions are quoted from Poe's whimsical
analysis of this very poem, but they indicate precisely the general range
of his verse.
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