The conflict that exists within the speaker who has lost his love, Lenore, is resolved when he finally despairs of ever being reunited with her.
The forlorn lover utters these lines at the poem's end:
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floorShall be lifted—nevermore!
In addition to its marvelous and innovative verse, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," evinces a macabre tone that crescendos with these last lines. For,...
The conflict that exists within the speaker who has lost his love, Lenore, is resolved when he finally despairs of ever being reunited with her.
The forlorn lover utters these lines at the poem's end:
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
In addition to its marvelous and innovative verse, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," evinces a macabre tone that crescendos with these last lines. For, the verse begins in a relatively light tone as the speaker seeks "surcease of sorrow" in his books; however, after he responds to a light tapping at his door and allows the strange visitor, a raven, to enter, the tone becomes ominous. For instance, the speaker begins to become perturbed and expresses his agitated state of mind with the alliterative use of the words grim, ungainly, ghostly, and gaunt. Further in the poem, the speaker becomes very unsettled as he perceives the dark bird as a symbol of lasting sorrow:
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core:
This and more I sat divining....
Just as the ominous bird refuses to leave, so the terrible sense of grief and loss remains in the heart of the speaker, to be lifted from him "nevermore."
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