In Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven', the only word the raven speaks is “Nevermore.”
The mysterious bird enters the narrator's chamber on a dreary December night and perches above the door on a bust of Pallas Athena. When the grieving narrator asks its name, the raven answers “Nevermore.” It repeats the word throughout the poem, turning a seemingly simple response into a cruel refrain about loss, memory, and hopelessness.
The narrator assumes that the bird learned the word from an unhappy former master and knows no other speech. Poe deliberately leaves open whether the raven understands the word or merely repeats it mechanically. The narrator nevertheless keeps asking questions, especially about whether he will be reunited with Lenore, the beloved woman whose death he mourns.
“The Raven” was published in January 1845 and became famous for its musical sound, internal rhymes, supernatural mood, and tightly repeated ending. “Nevermore” is not the raven's name, and “Quoth the Raven” is not its utterance: “quoth” is simply the narrator's old-fashioned verb meaning “said.”