DESIREE DIVINE

So on your paper, on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," you need to do some really good analysis on each stanza, so that your teacher will give you a good grade.

So let's start with the first stanza.

All right, it reads, "Once upon a midnight dreary, I pondered, weak and weary, over many quaint and curious volumes without an aura.

While I nodded, nearly *******, cementing him a-tapping, as if someone gently wrapping up my chamber door."

So what do you think Poe was doing in that first stanza there?