Edgar Allan Poe's poem “The Raven” contains 18 stanzas. Each stanza has six lines, giving the poem a carefully controlled structure that supports its hypnotic, repetitive sound. The poem's regular form is one reason its eerie atmosphere feels so deliberate rather than accidental.
“The Raven” generally uses trochaic octameter, a meter built from eight trochaic feet per line. Poe also combines internal rhyme, end rhyme, and heavy alliteration. Its recurring rhyme pattern is commonly described as ABCBBB, with the repeated “-ore” sound echoing the raven's answer, “Nevermore.”
The poem tells of a grieving narrator visited at midnight by a mysterious raven. The bird perches above a door on a bust of Pallas, the classical goddess of wisdom, and repeatedly answers the narrator's questions with the same word. As the narrator asks increasingly painful questions about Lenore and the afterlife, the refrain becomes a measure of his emotional collapse.
First published in January 1845, “The Raven” made Poe famous during his lifetime. It was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated, although it brought him little financial security.