The details of the poem - including the bird’s appearance - needed to all blend together, like a recipe, to bring out the somber concept he was trying to convey: The descent into madness of a bereaved lover, a man lamenting the loss of a beautiful woman named Lenore. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,īy the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore… Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door. Not the least obeisance made he not a minute stopped or stayed he īut, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore It was with these aesthetic calculations that Poe ousted the colorful bird that first flew into his mind, and welcomed the darker one that fluttered in: “I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven - the bird of ill omen - monotonously repeating the one word, ‘Nevermore,’ at the conclusion of each stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone…” “Very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone,” Poe explained in his piece in Graham’s. And as it turns out, the parrot, a pretty resplendent bird, did not perch so well in Poe’s mind because it didn’t fit the mood he was going for - melancholy, “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” In solving this dilemma in terms of imagery, he made adjustments to its plumage, altogether transforming the parrot by bestowing it with a black raiment.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe