Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he. But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door. Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

White and golden Lizzie stood like a lily in a flood. Like a rock of blue-veined stone lashed by tides obstreperously. Like a beacon left alone in a hoary roaring sea, sending up a golden fire. Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree, white with blossoms honey-sweet, sore beset by wasp and bee. Like a royal virgin town topped with gilded dome and spire, close beleaguered by a fleet, mad to tug her standard down.

Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. They nearly all need study and comment before they yield their secret. And the Poetics cannot be accounted an exception. For one thing the treatise is fragmentary. It originally consisted of two books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic, the other with Comedy. We possess only the first.