Quoth The Raven

I just got back one of my essays for this semester. It was my English 102 subject, where we were asked to take a small part of a greater work and analyse it, and show how it was relevant to the greater piece. I chose, of what we were given, The Raven, and the section I analysed was this:

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 an instant 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.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

I did quite well on the essay, scoring an 83%, with the teacher lauding me for my involvement of other fields of information. I talked about how the section of the poem both increases and decreases the tempo, and uses its trochee structure and alliteration to make two pieces of almost identical meter and rhythm still feel palpably different, with one half more urgent, the other half more relaxed.

Thing is, my main source for knowing what a Trochee was at all, was this: