The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem.  In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word “Nevermore.”  In fact, it was the very first which presented itself.

The next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of the one word “nevermore.”  In observing the difficulty which I at once found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the pre-assumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being—­I did not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word.  Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word “Nevermore” at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines.  Now, never losing sight of the object supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked myself—­“Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death, was the obvious reply.  “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is obvious—­“When it most closely allies itself to Beauty; the death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word “Nevermore.”  I had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the word in answer to the queries of the lover.  And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been depending, that is to say, the effect of the variation of application.  I saw that I could make the first query propounded by the lover—­the first query to which the Raven should reply “Nevermore”—­that I could make this first query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original nonchalance