He told how, toward the last, he had become heartily tired of and disgusted with the poem, of which he had so poor an opinion that he was many times on the point of destroying it. I believe that his having published it under the _nom de plume_ of "_Quarles_" was owing to this lack of confidence in it, and that had it proven a failure he would never have acknowledged himself the author. He feared to risk his literary reputation on what appeared to him of such uncertain merit.
He now, in speaking of the poem, regretted that he had not fully completed before publishing it.
"If I had a copy of it here," he said, "I could show you those knotty points of which I spoke, and which I have found it impossible to do away with," adding: "Perhaps you will help me. I am sure that you can, if you will."
I did not feel particularly flattered by this proposal, knowing that since his coming to Richmond he had made a similar request of at least two other persons. However, I cleared the table of the fruit and the flowers and placed before him several sheets of generous foolscap, on which I had copied for a friend _The Raven_ as it was first published. He requested me to read it aloud, and as I did so, slowly and carefully, he sat, pencil in hand, ready to mark the difficult passages of which he had spoken.
I paused at the third line. Had I not myself often noted the incongruity of representing the poet as pondering over _many_ a volume instead of a single one? I glanced inquiringly at Mr. Poe and, noting his unconscious look, proceeded. When I reached the line,
"And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;"
he gave a slight shiver or shrug of the shoulders--an expressive motion habitual to him--and the pencil came down with an emphatic stroke beneath the six last words.
This was one of the hardest knots, he said, nor could he find a way of getting over it. "_Ember_" was the only word rhyming with the two preceding lines, but in no way could he dispose of it except as he had done--thus producing the worst line in the poem.
We "pondered" over it for awhile and finally gave it up.
(But I may here mention that I have since, in studying the poem, made a discovery which, strangely enough, seems never to have occurred to the author. This was that in this particular stanza he had unconsciously reversed the order or arrangement of the lines, placing those of the triple rhymes first and the rhyming couplet last. Thus all his long years of worry over that unfortunate "_ember_" had been unnecessary, since the construction of the verse required not only the omission of the word as a rhyme, but of the whole line of