Shall be lifted -- Nevermore

...and yet, it shall be celebrated today. Happy publishing birthday to Poe's, The Raven, published today in 1845 by the New York Evening Mirror [to be read, if one is so inclined, in its entirety at House of Usher]. It was Poe's more or less "breakthrough" hit and offered him reasonable fame and demand for the last few years of his life (he died in 1849).

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."

I guess I know what I'll be reading to my wife before bed this evening...