Poe has given us a minute description of the composition of the
"Raven." One cannot wonder at its remarkable power when you
reflect upon the masterly knowledge with which it is constructed;
the consummate art with which all the elements that work most
powerfully on the human mind are united and blended together to
produce the most profound impressions.
But the world will always think that personal experience was
the fountain sq,tirce of all this manifestation of literary skill. In
all his other poems the melancholy nature and gloomy forebod
ings of the poet are conspicuously exhibited. The "Conqueror
Worm" reflects the deepest gloom ; even in the "Bells" we see that
the author forces the merriment with which it begins, for it soon
relapses into the old monody and closes amid shrieks and lamenta
tions. Thus we see that in the poems of Poe his own personality
and history are strikingly set forth, but to realize this fully we
should read them in connection with the record of his life as given
by his biographer.
Scattered along the pathway of his brilliant but brief and way
ward career, we find the events and circumstances to which his
immortal productions owe their origin. Poe himself has told us
that he did not believe that a poet composed in a kind of divine
frenzy. The reason of his unbelief is manifest. It was never the
case with him. Everything he wrote had its impulse in himself ;
it had already been dramatized in his own being, so that it had
acquired to him a fearful reality. He had the inspiration of actual
experience ever present with him.
"William," she sighed, and he hung upon her words with the
grip of a Sophomore upon a Frshman's jersey in the flag scrap,
"why am I like a broken locket."
"Ah," he said, "I cannot tell."
"Because, William," she murmured, and her voice had the far
away sound of the wind moaning around the fir trees of Lover's
Retreat, "I need a clasp." ,
And then, hang it, the Hibernian Hebe came in to light the
MISS BERTHA GILLILAND.