ssed.

His writings produced a great sensation. When "The Raven" was
published in 1845, a friend said of its effect in New York, "Everybody
has been raven-mad about his last poem." Mrs. Browning wrote that an
acquaintance of hers who had a bust of Pallas could not bear to look
at it. His fame is as great, or perhaps greater in Europe than in
America, especially in France; and his works have been translated into
French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

He died in Baltimore from causes never certainly known, his last
almost unconscious days being spent in a hospital; his dying words
were, "Lord, help my poor soul." He is buried in Westminster
churchyard, and in 1875 a monument was erected over his grave by the
teachers of Baltimore, generously aided by Mr. G. W. Childs of
Philadelphia. A memorial to him has been placed in the Metropolitan
Museum, New York, by the actors of the United States.

No poet has been the subject of more conflicting opinions as to his
life, habits, character, and genius, than Poe. The best lives of him
are those by John H. Ingram, an Englishman, and George E. Woodberry in
the American Men of Letters Series.

WORKS.

Poems.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
Literati of New York.
Conchologist's First Book (condensed from Wyatt).
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Raven and other Poems.
Eureka, a Prose Poem.
Gold Bug, Balloon Hoax, &c.

All his best known stories are highly artistic in finish, powerful in
theme, and often of such a nature as to make one shudder and avoid
them. "Israfel" is considered one of his most beautiful poems, and if
his self-consciousness could have allowed him to omit the last stanza,
it would have been without a flaw.

TO HELEN.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That, gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

ISRAFEL.

_And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures._--_Koran._