suffice. Hence his theory, clearly fitted to his own limitations, that "a
'long poem' is a flat contradiction in terms." The components of _The
Raven_ are few and simple: a man, a bird, and the phantasmal memory at a
woman. But the piece affords a fine display of romantic material. What have
we? The midnight; the shadowy chamber with its tomes of forgotten lore; the
student,--a modern Hieronymus; the raven's tap on the casement; the wintry
night and dying fire; the silken wind-swept hangings; the dreams and vague
mistrust of the echoing darkness; the black, uncanny bird upon the pallid
bust; the accessories of violet velvet and the gloating lamp. All this
stage effect of situation, light, color, sound, is purely romantic, and
even melodramatic, but of a poetic quality that melodrama rarely exhibits,
and thoroughly reflective of the poet's "eternal passion, eternal pain."

The rhythmical structure of _The Raven_ was sure to make an impression.
Rhyme, alliteration, the burden, the stanzaic form, were devised with
singular adroitness. Doubtless the poet was struck with the aptness of Miss
Barrett's musical trochaics, in "eights," and especially by the arrangement
adopted near the close of "Lady Geraldine":

"'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?'"

His artistic introduction of a third rhyme in both the second and fourth
lines, and the addition of a fifth line and a final refrain, made the
stanza of _The Raven_. The persistent alliteration seems to come without
effort, and often the rhymes within lines are seductive; while the refrain
or burden dominates the whole work. Here also he had profited by Miss
Barrett's study of ballads and romaunts in her own and other tongues. A