Notes

The poem unfolds on a “bleak December” night in the chamber of the “weak and weary” speaker. He sits half-asleep, attempting to read some old books, possibly as a distraction to stop thinking about his lost love, Lenore. He is surprised when he hears someone rapping at his door in the middle of the night. But he is also relieved that it is a visitor who is knocking and making his curtains rustle. He apologizes to the visitor for taking so long to answer the door, and he becomes anxious when there is no reply. He opens the door to find only “Darkness there, and nothing more.”

As the speaker stands, looking out into the darkness, he longs for his lost love and whispers her name, “Lenore.” Eerily, he hears the name echoed back. He turns back into his room, but he hears the tapping again, louder this time and realizes that it’s coming from the window. When he opens the window, a raven sweeps in and settles himself “upon a bust of Pallas,” considered a symbol of wisdom, which was placed above the chamber door. The speaker is fascinated with the bird who visits him on a night that is like a “Plutonian shore,” a reference to the Greek god of the underworld. The ninth stanza ends with the speaker asking the raven his name. The raven replies, “Nevermore.”

As the poem progresses, the raven does not fly away, nor does it say anything more. This stillness upsets the speaker who accuses the raven of being like his other friends who have deserted him. But again the bird just says, “Nevermore.” Spooked by the raven’s limited response, the speaker tries to come up with a logical explanation. He decides that the bird probably learned the word from an “unhappy master.” However, not satisfied with his theory, the speaker sits in front of the bird and continues to think about what the bird really means when it says, “Nevermore.”

As the speaker mulls the situation, he hallucinates about angels who appear and swing an “unseen censer,” spreading perfume around the room. He connects the perfume to nepenthe—a mythical drink that works like an antidepressant—and cries aloud that nepenthe would help him forget about Lenore. Again the bird replies, “Nevermore.”