Page 167 of 172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION - Complete Poetical Works

Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the poem--their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first apparent in the lines:

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

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"

It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical--but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of _Mournful and never-ending Remembrance_ is permitted distinctly to be seen:

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 lamplight 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!

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		"The fact that nobody had tried it before, did it for me more irresistible." William McGowan