Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/124

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PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

happen that one would become disturbed again. This occurs to Miss Miller too, since she allowed an English quotation to follow,—"Only this, and nothing more," without giving the source, it is true. The quotation comes from an unusually effective poem, "The Raven" by Poe. The line referred to occurs in the following:

"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."

The spectral raven knocks nightly at his door and reminds the poet of his irrevocably lost "Lenore." The raven's name is "Nevermore," and as a refrain to every verse he croaks his horrible "Nevermore." Old memories come back tormentingly, and the spectre repeats inexorably "Nevermore." The poet seeks in vain to frighten away the dismal guest; he calls to the raven:

"'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend,' I shrieked, upstarting—
'Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken, quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'"

That quotation, which, apparently, skips lightly over the situation, "Only this, and nothing more," comes from a text which depicts in an affecting manner the despair over the lost Lenore. That quotation also misleads our poet in the most striking manner. Therefore, she under-