Reverie comes from French, where it derives from a Middle French word meaning 'to wander' or 'to be delirious.' Another Poe piece, the satirical essay 'How to Write a Blackwood Article' (1838, a companion piece to the story 'A Predicament') uses the Latin phrase insomnia Jovis, translated as 'reveries of Jupiter-a phrase which … applies to thoughts pompous and inflated.' Coincidentally, Jupiter is also the name of Mr. The narrator of 'The Gold-Bug' describes how his friend, William Legrand, seems to fall into a stupor after attempting to describe a bug he discovered by making a sketch of it for the narrator. It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave.

As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. The noun reverie appears more than a dozen times in Poe's works, including the title of his poem ' The Forest Reverie.' Referring to a daydream or the condition of being lost in thought, it is an unusually light and optimistic word given Poe's general association with the dark and gruesome. We get nepenthe via Latin from the Greek prefix nē -, meaning 'not,' plus penthos, meaning 'grief' or 'sorrow.' Its tradition as a go-to word for poets dates back to Homer's Odyssey and was perpetuated by writers such as Edmund Spenser and Robert Browning. Poe's nameless narrator is seeking a way to forget his lost love, Lenore, and desperately asks the taunting raven if he has come to provide him a way to do so, finding a word that also rhymes with 'lent thee' from the previous line. Nepenthe once referred to a potion used by the ancients to make one forget pain or sorrow it was later used for anything that provided such relief. Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!” Respite-respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee-by these angels he hath sent thee Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

The tintinnabulation of the bells poem