'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.'

Uncanny and strange, Poe's writing defied convention, shocked readers, and confounded critics. This selection of his poetry and short stories demonstrates the astonishing power and imagination with which Poe probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The title poem, perhaps Poe's most famous work, follows a man's terrifying descent into madness after the loss of a lover, when he receives an unexpected visitor one bleak December night.