lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the reader,—to bring the mind into a proper frame for the denouement,-which is now brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible.

With the denouement proper-with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another world—the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the limits of the accountable,― of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still gleams,-the chamber-window of a student, occupied half in poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visiter's demeanor,' demands of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven addressed, answers with its customary word, "Nevermore," a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled

by the fowl's repetition of "Nevermore." The stu dent now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer, "Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural termination; and so far there has been no overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness of nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required: first, some amount of complexity, or, more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness-some undercurrent, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of the suggested meaning-it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under current of the theme-which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.

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

THE POWER OF WORDS.

Oinos.- Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!

Agathos.-You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given.

Oinos. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all.

Agathos. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.

Oinos. But does not The Most High know all? Agathos.-That (since He is The Most High) must be still the one thing unknown even to HIM. Oinos.- But, since we grow hourly in knowledge. must not at last all things be known?

Agathos.Look down into the abysmal distances! ―attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous

vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus-and thus-and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?-the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

Oinos.-I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

Agathos.-There are no dreams in Aidenn; but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever unquenchable within it, since to quench it would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me, then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come, we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns.

Oinos. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me! Speak to me in the earth's familiar tones! I understood not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the methods of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

Agathos.-I mean to say that the Deity does not

create.

Oinos.-Explain!