Monday, January 29, 2018

One Hundred And Seventy Three Years Ago Tonight... Of Immortality.


Depicted at right is a much later illustration from Poe's immortal Raven [along with a cashmere muffler that I have never stopped wearing].

It is my favorite winter thing -- without any peer. Warm, soft and comforting, in the icy blasts that are January in Chicago. . . just as so many of the lines of this poem have. . . comforted me.

Amazing that it has been just under one and a three quarters centuries, since the below first appeared in The New York Evening Mirror, tonight. My. . . how time flies:


. . . .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. . . .”

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!”. . . .

“. . . .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. . . .


Nameless for evermore. . . smile. I like that too. Onward.

नमस्ते

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