Edgar Allan Poe: Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.

Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

Edgar Allan Poe

gone forever opportunity

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

Edgar Allan Poe

verses found may

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

Edgar Allan Poe

sorrow evil home

...for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. With God all is Now.

Edgar Allan Poe

law insanity lying

There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.

Edgar Allan Poe

plunge impatient passion

No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.

Edgar Allan Poe

combination breathing path

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

Edgar Allan Poe

mathematician poet reason

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.

Edgar Allan Poe

titles soul needs

This maiden she lived with no other thought

Edgar Allan Poe

maidens famous-love love

If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Edgar Allan Poe

visible ifs mind

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 lamplight 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.

Edgar Allan Poe

eye dream lying

But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Edgar Allan Poe

angel sea beautiful

The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.

Edgar Allan Poe

atheism infinity ideas

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

Edgar Allan Poe

artist names men

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Edgar Allan Poe

oil-and-water mad poetry

I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect-in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition-I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.

Edgar Allan Poe

soul struggle together

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.

Edgar Allan Poe

eternal worst gone

In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.

Edgar Allan Poe

development space character

Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.

Edgar Allan Poe

thirst torture self

Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.

Edgar Allan Poe

fats able people