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 lamp-light 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!
(From The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe)
It's late. It's bleak and cold. Our poor narrator strives to beat back despondency and the dismal weather with a feel good book. But the sadness lurks just beyond his happy chamber. It taps. It raps. It even entreats entrance. But when the shutter is thrown open, our narrator finds no ghost as he feared or hoped. Instead, we meet the raven.
But we're not really dealing with a bird, are we? No, the raven is the personification (or rather, the ornithopterification) of despair itself--despair over a death, the narrator's beloved Lenore.
Poe himself was grieving at the time he wrote these lines. Perhaps he was shooing his own raven from its roost. When The Raven was published in 1845, Virginia Clemm, Poe's wife and cousin, was languishing with tuberculosis. She had suffered a debilitating lung hemorrhage in 1842. Her death finally came in 1847, two years after the publication of The Raven. The loss overwhelmed Poe, who died a mere two years later. The Raven's chilling response of "nevermore" was true for Poe. No relief would come. No joyful reunion.
Pain and loss are like that--forever darkening us with its shadow.
So, I ask you in this time of year when light and dark, life and death, meet and then cross: glance over at your own chamber door. Are the glowering eyes of a raven reflecting the lamplight? What does it represent? And how great is the shadow it casts over your soul?