“Be that word our sign of parting, cruel thing!” I cried, upstarting; “Get thee back to Mr. Gladstone, who created thee of yore; Go, and leave behind no token of the words that thou hast spoken; Leave my vigil here unbroken, quit my Budget on the floor! Take thy figure off my Budget, lying there upon the floor.” Quoth the Surplus: “Nevermore!” “No, I will not think of flitting, but still sitting, ever sitting, On thy wretched, feeble Budgets, on the table or the floor, Will remind thee of the figure, sometimes less and sometimes bigger, Of the noble Gladstone’s Surplus, always left in years of yore Yes, I’ll always stay and haunt you――always stay and ever taunt you―― As you draw up hopeless Budgets, and then throw them on the floor; And my figure you shall ever see upon your study floor―― I will leave you nevermore!” And it doubtless had been sitting still, nor shown a sign of flitting―― Had I not with sudden impulse started, falling by the door, And discover’d, slowly rising――what is not at all surprising―― That my composites were out, whilst daylight stream’d across the floor, Then I knew I had been dreaming, but my brain continued teeming With the vision, and the Surplus that had come from years of yore, And my thoughts on what that Surplus said whilst there upon my floor Will be fixèd evermore! _Truth._ Christmas Number, 1879. ―――――――― THE RAVEN. (_A Version, respectfully dedicated to the Duke of Somerset._) Late, upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered, chill but cheery, Over certain prosy volumes of Contemporary lore―― ’Midst prophetic pages prowling, suddenly I heard a growling, As of something faintly howling, howling at my chamber-door. “’Tis some poor stray tyke,” I muttered, “howling at my chamber-door; Only that, and nothing more.” Eugh! distinctly I remember it was in the cold December, And my fire to its last ember burned, while outer blasts did roar. Fearfully I funked the morrow, vainly I had sought to borrow From my friends, or, to my sorrow, add to my coal-merchant’s score―― To that swollen, heavy-laden thing poor devils call a “score”―― To be settled――nevermore. And the windy, wild, uncertain flapping of my window curtain Filled me, thrilled me with fantastic fancies never known before; So that, now, to check the cheating of my mind I stood repeating, “’Tis that JONES’S dog entreating entrance at my chamber-door―― Bibulous JONES’S pug entreating entrance at my chamber-door,―― Only that, and nothing more.”