"He was at all times a dreamer-dwelling in ideal realms-in heaven or
hell-peopled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He
walked-the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in
indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer (never
for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already
damned, but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of
his idolatry; or with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with
anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the
wildest storms, and all night, with drenched garments and arms
beating the winds and rains, would speak as if the spirits that at
such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by
whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which
his constitution subjected him---close by the Aidenn where were those
he loved-the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses,
as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures
whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death.

"He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his will and
engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some
controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of 'The Raven' was probably
much more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very
intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. _He_
was that bird's

" ' unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never-never more.'