Upon which remark I delivered it up to the
custody of his own conscience, and saw it no more.
One day, towards the last of my stay at Lowell (I never changed
my work-room again), this same friendly fellow-toiler handed me a
poem to read, which some one had sent in to us from the count-
ing-room, with the penciled comment, "Singularly beautiful." It
was Poe's "Raven," which had just made its first appearance in
some magazine. It seemed like an apparition in literature,
indeed; the sensation it created among the staid, measured lyrics
of that day, with its flit of spectral wings, and its ghostly
refrain of "Nevermore!" was very noticeable. Poe came to Lowell
to live awhile, but it was after I had gone away.
Our national poetry was at this time just beginning to be well
known and appreciated. Bryant had published two volumes, and
every school child was familiar with his "Death of the Flowers"
and "God's First Temples." Some one lent me the "Voices of the
Night," the only collection of Longfellow's verse then issued, I
think.
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