in the revised form in which they now appear in his works. The volume
contained nearly all the poems upon which his poetic fame justly rests.
Among those that may be regarded as embodying his highest poetic
achievement are _The Raven_, _Lenore_, _Ulalume_, _The
Bells_, _Annabel Lee_, _The Haunted Palace_, _The
Conqueror Worm_, _The City in the Sea_, _Eulalie_, and
_Israfel_. Rarely has so large a fame rested on so small a number of
poems, and rested so securely. His range of themes, it will be noticed,
is very narrow. As in his tales, he dwells in a weird, fantastic, or
desolate region--usually under the shadow of death. He conjures up
unearthly landscapes as a setting for his gloomy and morbid fancies. In
_The City in the Sea_, for example:--

"There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie."

He conformed his poetic efforts to his theory that a poem should be
short. He maintained that the phrase "'a long poem' is simply a flat
contradiction in terms." His strong artistic sense gave him a firm
mastery over form. He constantly uses alliteration, assonance,
repetition, and refrain. These artifices form an essential part of _The
Raven_, _Lenore_, and _The Bells_. In his poems, as in his
tales, Poe was less anxious to set forth an experience or a truth than to
make an impression. His poetry aims at beauty in a purely artistic sense,
unassociated with truth or morals. It is, for the most part, singularly
vague, unsubstantial, and melodious. Some of his poems--and precisely