waltzers pause with "disconcert and tremulousness and meditation," as often
as the hour came round.

Of all these mystical cadences, the plaint of _The Raven_, vibrating
through the portal, chiefly has impressed the outer world. What things go
to the making of a poem,--and how true in this, as in most else, that race
which named its bards "the makers"? A work is called out of the void. Where
there was nothing, it remains,--a new creation, part of the treasure of
mankind. And a few exceptional lyrics, more than others that are equally
creative, compel us to think anew how bravely the poet's pen turns things
unknown

"to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name."

Each seems without a prototype, yet all fascinate us with elements wrested
from the shadow of the Supernatural. Now the highest imagination is
concerned about the soul of things; it may or may not inspire the Fantasy
that peoples with images the interlunar vague. Still, one of these lyrics,
in its smaller way, affects us with a sense of uniqueness, as surely as the
sublimer works of a supernatural cast,--Marlowe's "Faustus," the "Faust" of
Goethe, "Manfred," or even those ethereal masterpieces, "The Tempest" and
"A Midsummer Night's Dream." More than one, while otherwise unique, has
some burden or refrain which haunts the memory,--once heard, never
forgotten, like the tone of a rarely used but distinctive organ-stop.
Notable among them is Bürger's "Lenore," that ghostly and resonant ballad,
the lure and foil of the translators. Few will deny that Coleridge's
wondrous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" stands at their very head. "Le
Juif-Errant" would have claims, had Beranger been a greater poet; and, but
for their remoteness from popular sympathy, "The Lady of Shalott" and "The