Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Commentary

This poem recounts Zeus’ rape of Leda, the wife of Sparta’s King Tyndareus. From this union, the twin Castor and Polydeuces were born, as was their sister, Helen of Troy. When Helen was abducted and carried off from Sparta to Troy, her brothers rescued her.

The poem begins with violence. Zeus, having taken the form of a swan, ravishes Leda, and there is neither tenderness nor love in the act; it is a “brutal” violation, not an act of love, in which a god seizes that which he desires by brute force. The first words suggest only a physical assault. There is “a sudden blow,” the “beating” of wings, and a “staggering girl.” However, the next images of the opening lines quickly add a sexual context. The assault is not merely physical; it is sexual-it is rape: the girl’s’ “thighs [are] caressed/By the dark webs,” and “her nape [is] caught in his bill”:

 

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

If we are familiar with the myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan to ravish Leda, these lines make sense at once. If we are not familiar with the myth, the sudden references to “wings” and “webs” and “bill” are not only unexpected but fantastic, even bizarre. The rapist, we realize, is not a man but a bird-the bird, apparently, alluded to in the title of the poem. In either case, the depiction of bestiality-and an adulterous bestiality at that-arrests our attention. The rape becomes both immediate and concrete. It is not merely a past event described; it is one that is taking place, as it were, before our eyes and, as witnesses to this “brutal” act, we must feel much the same as its victim feels.

Leda is not a willing participant in the act. Terrified, she tries to resist, struggling to push her attacker’s “feathered glory from her loosening thighs”:

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

She is unable to prevent the assault. She is, after all, a mortal woman, whereas her attacker is none other than Zeus himself. It is the chief of the gods who holds her “helpless breast upon his breast.”

The next lines reinforce the attacker’s bestial character. The rapist is not human. In fact, Zeus, in his present guise, is of another species entirely, and Leda, “laid in that white rush,” cannot help but feel “the strange heart beating where it lies.”

With his emission, Zeus engenders not only Leda’s future children, but creates the catalyst for the Trojan War as well, for it will occur due to the abduction of Leda’s daughter, Helen:

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

The concluding lines of the poem ask whether Leda envisioned the future war, which Zeus, it seems, even in the act of ravishing her, knew would occur. In addition, these lines tell the reader explicitly that Zeus had no feeling whatever for the object of his lust, dropping Leda with indifference as soon as he had satisfied his passion:

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

The poet leaves no room for debate as to whether Zeus felt any love or affection for the woman he ravished. The god felt nothing for her; she was only a means of satisfying his lust and, perhaps, a vehicle by which to set up the future war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Whether he allowed her to glimpse that future war is unclear, as is the question of his motive if he did allow her a prophetic glimpse of the catastrophe to come. If he did permit Leda to foresee the war, was it to dignify or justify his rape of her or was it to torment her by letting her see what would come of the act? 

Nowhere in the poem do we get any hint that Zeus is at all concerned with Leda as a human being. In fact, the opposite is true. The rape is sudden and violent; Leda is “terrified”; she attempts to resist, but is “helpless,” “mastered by the brute blood of the air.” When Zeus finishes with her, his “indifferent beak” lets her “drop.” It would seem, therefore, that his motive, if he did grant her a glimpse of the war to come, must have been to torment her with the knowledge that her rape would be followed by a future war, resulting from her daughter’s abduction, in which thousands will be killed. Zeus is not human on any level. As a god, he is not only above human beings but he has neither human feelings nor any feeling for them.

Long-Legged Fly by William Butler Yeats : Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

That civilization may not sink,

Its great battle lost,

Quiet the dog, tether the pony

To a distant post;

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand upon his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,

That nobody looks; her feet

Practice a tinker shuffle

Picked up on a street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

There on that scaffolding resides

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

Commentary

 The first line of this poem alerts us that something of monumental importance—no less than the survival of civilization—is at risk. For this reason, the speaker of the poem asks that precautions be taken against potential distractions. The dog should be silenced, and the pony should be tied to a “distant post.” The next lines introduce the subject of this first stanza. None other than Caesar himself is plotting his next battle. He is in his tent, “where the maps are spread,” but his gaze is “fixed upon nothing.” The “nothing” that he focuses on could be the destruction that will result from the battle to come, the very battle that he is, even now, planning. However, this immediate destruction will have the paradoxical effect of ensuring civilization’s survival, as the opening line contends. To this end, Caesar’s mind, the speaker says, “moves upon the silence” “like a long-legged fly upon the stream,” with quickness and certainty, a fluid movement of consciousness.

 
In the next stanza, the poem moves from Caesar to Helen of Troy, she of the face that launched a thousand ships. Helen’s mother is Leda, the Spartan queen who was raped by Zeus in the guise of a swan. As a result of their union, Helen was born and, upon her abduction, the Trojan War was waged: “A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead.” The line in “Long-Legged Fly,” “That the topless towers be burnt,” recalls the line “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower” from “Leda and the Swan.” This is the same event that Leda, in “Leda and the Swan,” was allowed, perhaps, to see. Now, Helen is beginning to develop her charms. (Here, we see her practicing a dance, whereby, we may suppose, she will develop grace.) Her development will require an uninterrupted silence, just as quiet was needed for Caesar to plot his strategies. That’s why we are asked to “Move most gently if move” we “must/ In this lonely place.”
 

 The third stanza concerns the artist Michelangelo at work on the Sistine Chapel. It may seem amusing that the speaker suggests that the importance of this work will be to ignite lust in young women. “Girls at puberty,” upon viewing the nude men in the artist’s painting will have their first thoughts of men as men—that is, their first sexual thoughts concerning men—“the first Adam in their thought.” However, we should remember that civilization’s continuance is predicated as much—or more—upon such thoughts and their attendant actions as it is on the winning of wars. For the sake of the artist—or perhaps for art’s sake—the speaker, once again, calls for the elimination of all distractions, including not only children but also the Pope himself, who might quarrel with Michelangelo’s use of nudes in his painting:

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

The chapel is as quiet as a mouse, so to speak, as the great artist works, his mind, like that of both Caesar’s and Helen’s, moving “upon the silence” “like a long-legged fly upon the stream.” 
 

 
A great general, a great beauty, and a great artist—three famous persons of celebrated accomplishment, each in a different area of life—share the same genius, for the mind of each “like a long-legged fly upon the stream/ . . . moves upon silence.” In each case, the genius requires nothing more than silence to perform, since the movement upon that silence is a movement of the mind, which is subjective and unique rather than objective and general. The poem suggests that the rest of us also have a part to play in the accomplishments of such genius. What is more, our part may be neither as small nor as insignificant as it might first seem. It is the ordinary person who is called upon to “quiet the dog,” to “tether the pony,” to “move most gently,” to “shut the door of the Pope’s chapel,” and to “keep those children out” so that the great men and women of genius can exercise their genius. In short, it is we, ordinary men and women, who are called upon to maintain order and to sustain civilization so that, within the peace and quiet afforded by such orderly life, genius can develop and create.

"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Commentary

The title of this poem alludes to the return of Jesus Christ, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible. The title thus establishes an expectation (the return of Jesus Christ) that the poem will overturn.

As the poem opens, a falcon is circling overhead. Unable to hear its trainer, the falcon is disoriented. Instead of its circles becoming narrower and narrower as it returns to its master, the falcon’s circles widen more and more as it seeks the falconer:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer. . . .

In Medieval times, aristocrats used falcons to hunt smaller birds. The falcon and the falconer appear to symbolize Western culture and civilization in their widest senses, including their political, military, and artistic dimensions. As such, the falcon and the falconer represent the larger social constructs that “center” humanity (at least in the West). However, we are told that “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Instead, order has given way to the lawless confusion of anarchy, followed by violence, and a “blood-dimmed tide is loosed” upon the world. Days of innocence are gone, and the good among humanity stand idly by, doing nothing, lacking “all convictions,” while the dregs of society “are full of passionate intensity.”

This dire state of affairs makes the speaker of the poem think that “some revelation” must be about to be seen or heard:

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

At the words “Second Coming,” an image appears to him, coming, it seems, from “Spiritus Mundi,” the World-Soul. (Today, we might refer to this as the collective unconscious.) The image is strange and terrifying, a sphinx-like creature with a “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” crawling across the desert on “slow thighs.” The troubling revelation ends abruptly, with a dropping down of darkness.

However, in seeing the image of the strange, fearsome creature, the speaker has come to understand that “twenty centuries of [its] stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle” (that is, by the birth of Christ). Now, instead of the return of the son of God, it appears that some “rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” The term “beast” makes us think, perhaps, of the “beast” of the Book of Revelation, the anti-Christ.

 
The failure of human civilization will not be followed by a return of Jesus, to judge the living and the dead, but by the birth of some “rough beast” whose rule was interrupted by the “twenty centuries of sleep” that ensued Jesus’ birth. The beast’s “hour has come round at last,” the speaker of the poem tells us, suggesting that its birth is inevitable, even, perhaps, predestined, and it will be born in the same place in which Jesus Christ was born. However, this creature will be no savior. Rather, the poem suggests, it will be the antithesis of a savior; it will be a destroyer.

Although the poem alludes to a Biblical prophecy, to depict the beast of Revelation, it describes a lumbering sphinx. Born of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, the sphinx, one version of which had the body of a lion and the face of a man, has been held to represent various things, including Egypt’s gods and pharaohs. In addition, it served in ancient Egypt as a guard of holy places and tombs. (A sphinx with a woman’s head also strangled travelers who were unable to answer its riddle.) Some sphinxes also had falcons’ heads. In human-headed animals, some scholars have seen a transition from an all-encompassing nature worship in which humans were seen as just another animal among animals (hence, the human heads on animals) to a polytheism in which emergent human beings, as gods, came to rule over nature. Perhaps, in “The Second Coming,” a reversal of this process is happening, as the concept of God as a transcendent Creator is replaced by the older view in which humans are again seen as fully immanent parts of nature.

Polytheistic Egyptian religion was a form of nature worship, in which the Egyptians sought to placate the gods that ruled the natural forces that their Nile-dependent society needed to survive. It is this concept of humanity, nature, and God that, represented by the merciless, sphinx-like creature, will supplant the Judeo-Christian concepts of humanity, nature, and God. A plurality of gods will replace a single God as people concern themselves with this world and their place within nature rather than with one, transcendent God who gives unity to his creation, calling humanity to embrace ideals that are rooted in faith rather than in nature and mere survival. The birth of the sphinx-like creature in Bethlehem appears to symbolize the beginning of a “new” age and the acceptance of a different value system than the one that humanity has embraced for the past two thousand years. It will be a revolutionary time accompanied by violence, lawlessness, and a widespread loss of innocence. An old cycle is about to begin anew.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Commentary

The poem expresses the fleeting nature of fame and its ultimate vanity, or futility. It begins with the speaker of the poem recounting his meeting a “traveler from an antique land.” The “antique land” is Egypt, a place steeped in ancient history, tradition, and lore. According to this traveler, “two vast and trunkless legs of stone/ Stand in the desert,” not far from a “a shattered visage” that lies “half sunk” in the sand. Obviously, this had once been a huge statue of a man, whose figure had been carved to stand for all time.

Apparently, the figure was one of authority, for the haughty, contemptuous face that is now half buried in the desert sand wears a “frown,/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.” The face is lifelike in the sense that it conveys its real-life counterpart’s arrogant disdain: showing “that its sculptor well those passions read,” passions which “survive” in the features of the stone visage that the artist had “stamped” centuries ago, “on these lifeless things.” Ironically, the statue that was to memorialize the proud ruler has come to ruin in the desert wasteland, a victim of centuries of erosion. It is broken, partly missing, and to some extent buried. It has not stood the test of time very well. Time has not been kind to the memory of the harsh ruler. His memorial has not immortalized him.

On the pedestal, the haughty ruler has left a final address to the world. His last words identify him as “Ozymandias, king of kings,” commanding the mighty who should see his statue to consider his accomplishments and “despair” at ever hoping to rival his own mighty works. These final words, however, are empty and vain. They are hollow and seem to mock the broken, decapitated statue that has long since become nothing more than “a mighty wreck”:

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Fame is as uncertain as life itself. In pagan societies, even far later than those of the vanished Egypt of centuries ago, people aspired to immortality by being remembered and honored by succeeding generations. We see this impulse as late as the Anglo-Saxon period, in which the hero Beowulf hopes to attain an immortality similar to Ozymandias’ by virtue of his having performed great deeds of courage. Ozymandias, it seems, was more than a mere warrior chieftain. He was “king of kings” who had accomplished peerless deeds. His person had been commemorated with a gigantic statue of stone. Nevertheless, his hopes were all in vain. The sole reminder of his long-ago existence is a crumbling “wreck,” which has been, as it were, not only dismembered and decapitated by the wind and the sand, but also half buried in the lonely desert, “boundless and bare,” that stretches away from the ruined monument on every hand.

If this king’s life has been forgotten, certainly those of ordinary men and women will not be remembered. Centuries after one’s death, what shall it mean that a man or a woman ever lived at all? The poem seems to suggest a pessimistic answer, ending not only as a cautionary tale concerning the vanity of human pride and the futility of memorials as a means of attaining immortality, but also a declaration that human existence is, when all is said and done, what the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre characterized as “absurd.” We live and we die, and centuries later, it is as if we never existed, no matter how great our accomplishments might have been during our lifetimes.

Ozymandias, we should note, is the pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279 to 1212 B. C. His shattered granite statue lies at the site of the Ramesseum, his temple, at Gurna, Egypt, and the “colossal wreck” of his shattered statue has been photographed. The ancient Greeks, who derived “Ozymandias” from one of Ramesses’ many titles, gave him the name “Ozymandias.”

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you" -- here I opened wide the door; --

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore!"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!"

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --

"'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--

Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before--

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "Thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore,

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!--

Whether Tempest sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--

On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore--

Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?-- tell me-- tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! --quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and Take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

The opening stanza of this celebrated poem sets the tone, suggests that the narrator, or speaker, is uneasy about something; establishes the mood as a somber, gloomy one; and, of course, presents the rhyme scheme, which is both complex and calculatingly hypnotic:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

The speaker tells us that he was half-asleep, after poring over “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” such as, today, one might find, perhaps, in the New Age section of a bookstore--books on the occult, otherworldly, and paranormal. The adjectives, coupled with the poem’s internal and end-rhymes and the repetition of certain images and ideas (especially the phrase “nothing more“), creates a sense of gloom that is pervasive throughout the initial poem, as the same technique, employed in the following stanzas will prove to be throughout the rest of the work.

In this first stanza, the knock at the door seems “gentle,” and the speaker supposes that it signifies “some visitor,” “only this and nothing more.” His supposition seems reasonable, but it does introduce the question as to why he might thing that it could be anything more than merely “some visitor”? (It is important to observe that the speaker not only asks the questions that are posed buy that he also answers them; both the questions and the answers to them are his own.) What else does he, perhaps, suppose the tapping, rapping at the door might signify and why? With this seemingly innocent, casual comment on the speaker’s part, especially considering that the hour is midnight--the so-called witches’ hour--and that he has been studying “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,“ an air of mystery and a hint of the malevolent enter the poem, which will become more and more pronounced.

In the next stanza, Poe, through the speaker, sets the scene, informing the reader that it was--and here’s another gloomy adjective “in the bleak December,” which is to say, the winter of the year, a season often associated with death. He reinforces the idea of death by using terms and images associated with it. Each coal in the fireplace is a “dying ember,” which is reflected upon the floor as if it were a “ghost.” It is obvious that death is much on the speaker’s mind--so much so, in fact, that he includes images of death in the description even of so mundane a phenomenon as a fire smoldering in his fireplace. The death of the fire is a slow one; the speaker marks the death of “each separate dying ember.” It is as if the fire represents the slow dying of his own hope or faith as well as his own sanity, which becomes more and more discernable as the poem progresses. He also tells the reader the motive for his having burned the midnight oil, poring over these “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” He was hoping to ease his grief at having suffered the death of his beautiful, beloved, whom he describes as “the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,” whom he recognizes is gone from his presence for ever, “nameless here for evermore.” He does not seek solace from his grief by reading the Bible or some other religious holy book, it should be observed; rather, he has sought to find “surcease of sorrow” in the study of “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”:

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.

So absorbed has the narrator been with his grief that, upon awakening to the tapping at his door, he is startled by the rustling of the curtains. The adjectives that he uses to describe the curtains’ rustling are those which he chooses; as such, they tell us about his own mental state, since, obviously cloth cannot experience emotions--it is he who feels and (using a Freudian term) projects his feelings onto the curtain, characterizing them as “sad” and “uncertain,” just as, earlier, he described the smoldering coals of his fire as “dying embers,” each of which reflected its “ghosts upon the floor.” The speaker’s word choice, as demonstrated in the adjectives that he uses in descriptions of the mundane objects and phenomena in his environment, together with his personifications of those objects and phenomena, do more to characterize him, showing his thoughts and feelings, than they do anything else. It is he who feels himself to be dying, not the fire, and it is he feels sad and uncertain, not the rustling curtains. The reader must wonder why the mere rustling of curtains should “thrill” the speaker, filling him with “fantastic terrors never felt before” and make himself stand, repeating, over and over, “"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--/ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --/ This it is and nothing more,” as if to convince himself of the truth of this explanation of the rustling curtains. The reader is apt, at this point, to wonder about the narrator. At best, he seems unduly frightened and worried; at worst, he seems to have a questionable grip on his sanity.

The effect of his repeating to himself that it is only “some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door” seems to calm him, as he says that “presently my soul grew stronger,” and he is able to end his hesitation about answering his visitor’s knock, although the hesitant manner in which he finally does answer, begging his visitor’s forgiveness and explaining why he is late in answering the knock, indicates that he remains frightened and apprehensive. When he finally does open the door, he sees “darkness there and nothing more.” The reader can imagine his shock and terror at finding no visitor there. He has told himself, again and again, that the tapping and rapping at his door and the rustling of the curtains at his windows have a simple, natural explanation and portend nothing more than the appearance of “some visitor.” Now, faced with “darkness . . . and nothing more,” that theory has been shown to be wrong.

His fear, as the next stanza shows, increases immensely as a result, and he next hypothesizes that the cause of the sounds he’s heard may be supernatural or otherworldly; he suspects that his “visitor” may have been the dead Lenore! However, when he goes back into his room and hears a louder tapping than that which he has heard before, this time coming from his window lattice, he attributes the sound to the effect of the wind. To explain the sounds that he hears, the speaker alternates between attributing the cause of those sounds to the supernatural or otherworldly and to the natural and mundane. He also seems to recognize that he is in an excited, frightened state of mind, because he tells himself, “Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’”

The speaker’s state of mind is conveyed by his behavior as much as by his speech. Now, he throws open the shutter to his window, as if to take by surprise whatever thing, natural or monstrous, that may wait outside his room, thereupon meeting the raven. The speaker personifies the bird, just as he has the fire and the curtains. It is a noble bird, which makes “not the least obeisance. . . but, with mein of lord or lady,” takes up its perch above the speaker’s door, as if the speaker’s room were its own and the speaker, rather than the bird, were the master of the house:

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

The speaker is first amused by the solemnity of the “stately Raven”--notice the capital “R”; this is no mere raven, but The Raven--a god in avian plumage--but his amusement soon gives way to dread as he imagines that this “grim and ancient Raven” is a representative from the land of the dead, a lord from “the Night’s Plutonian shore.” Again, these are the speaker’s own thoughts. He continues to personify the bird that has entered his chamber, attributing not merely human but divine attributes to the bird, seeing it as an emissary of the dead, as a messenger sent, perhaps, by the Roman god of the dead, Pluto, himself.

When the anxious speaker asks the bird to tell him what it is called in the land of the dead, the bird answers, “Nevermore.” The reply seems to put the speaker’s fears to rest, for he muses upon the notion of a bird that can seemingly talk but whose reply is but a meaningless absurdity. Again, the speaker vacillates, hesitantly, back and forth between rational thought and mad imaginings:

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

The speaker is quick to note that the bird’s vocabulary seems to consist of but this one word: “But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only/ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.” Although, in response to the speaker’s question, the raven’s reply had borne “little relevancy,” it is interesting to note that the same response soon will come to have greater and greater significance for the speaker (who, after all, frames the questions to which the same reply is always to be made). Indeed, this single-word answer to his questions will come to terrify him, intensifying his despair of ever again seeing his “lost Lenore.”

The reader should remember, throughout the reading of the poem, that the raven answers always with the same word; it is the speaker who must frame the questions so that the bird’s response appears to be significant and appears, it might be added, to reinforce the speaker’s own preconceptions about the what, if anything, follows death. Only in the speaker’s mind is the raven The Raven, because it is he who poses questions to which “nevermore” may be regarded as being a significant response. As the speaker himself confesses, it is he who ponders possible meanings for the bird’s “croaking ‘Nevermore’”:

. . . Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

The speaker, at first, cannot discern whether the raven is sent from God or from the devil, whether it is a messenger from heaven or from hell. When he asks it whether there is “balm in Gilead,” or a salve that is capable of healing his anguished grief at Lenore’s death, the raven replies, not surprisingly to the reader, “Nevermore,” whereupon, not liking this answer, the speaker believes the raven must be a bird from hell, although one that is able to discern the future, and he asks--almost begs to know--whether he shall ever hold Lenore in his embrace again, whether, in short, there is a life after death, during which he and his beloved may be reunited:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Outraged at this reply (which he contrived to be the answer by the way that he formulated his question), the speaker orders the raven from his chamber, but the bird ignores his command, remaining on his perch above the door:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Now, the same bird that the speaker has characterized variously as merely an “ebony bird,” as an emissary from “the Night’s Plutonian shore,” as a messenger sent by God or the devil, and as a demonic prophet, now regards it as the very embodiment of wisdom, for it occupies (not, in the mind of the narrator, by sheer chance, the reader may assume) “the pallid bust of Pallas,” or Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Here, we take our leave of the speaker, leaving him obsessed with the idea that, in having (apparently subconsciously) answered his own questions about the likelihood of his attaining “surcease of sorrow” by being reunited with his “lost Lenore,“ he has determined, just as he had believed all along, that there is no existence beyond death, and that the proper attitude to take concerning the belief in the survival of death is a despairing disbelief. His “lost Lenore” was lost even before the raven appeared to him, to reinforce his beliefs that death is the end of life and that there is no hope in an existence beyond the grave.