Notes
1] Helen: Poe was thinking of the mother of his school friend Robert Stanard, Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard of Richmond, Mass. (Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969], I, 164).
2] Nicéan: of Nicaea, a city of the Byzantine empire (within present-day Turkey)
8] Naiad: classical nymph of lake or stream
14] Psyche: a Greek word meaning "soul" and the name of Cupid's spouse
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Edgar A. Poe, The Raven and Other Poems (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845): 91 (J. Lorimer Graham copy in the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library, University of Texas). Facsimile edition by Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Facsimile Text Society, 1942). PS 2609 A1 1845A ROBA.
First publication date:
1831
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2.0.
Recent editing: 2:2002/4/4
Rhyme: ababb