and the lines,—
"Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor."[1]
Again, not only are there resemblances in thought, but a marked resemblance in rhythm and metre, to Poe's words and work in this stanza of Mrs. Browning's poem:—
"Eyes, he said, now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me?
Shining eyes like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone!
Underneath that calm white forehead, are ye ever burning torrid
O'er the desolate sand desert of my heart and life undone?"
Here is, veritably, a stanza, to parallel in versification and ideas Poe's lines,—
"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."
This stanza far more likely than that containing the first cited line of Mrs. Browning, would have suggested the metrical method, the rhythm, and the additional rhymes in the first and third lines. But there the suggestion ends; all beyond that is apparently Poe's own. It is, of course, possible that other sources of the inspiration of the Raven are discoverable although not yet discovered, but, when all the germs have been
- ↑ First published version.
