Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Raven
That Raven on yon left-hand oak
(Curse on his ill-betiding croak)
Bodes me no good.
Gay—Fables. The Farmer’s Wife and the Raven.
The Raven’s house is built with reeds,—
Sing woe, and alas is me!
And the Raven’s couch is spread with weeds,
High on the hollow tree;
And the Raven himself, telling his beads
In penance for his past misdeeds,
Upon the top I see.
Thos. Darcy McGee—The Penitent Raven.
The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl
His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. Story of Coronis. Addison’s trans.
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!”
Poe—The Raven. St. 8.
And the Raven, never flitting,
Still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas
Just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming
Of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming
Throws his shadow on the floor,
And my soul from out that shadow,
That lies floating on the floor,
Shall be lifted—nevermore.
Poe—The Raven. St. 18.
The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 264.
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 40.
O, it comes o’er my memory,
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.
Othello. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 20.
Did ever raven sing so like a lark,
That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?
Titus Andronicus. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 158.