American Football Poem
In 1996. The Ravens, a team that formerly played in Cleveland, Ohio, moved into Baltimore's Memorial Stadium and began to play in the 1996 season. "This is a new beginning and a new era for us," the Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell told fans at the team's naming ceremony.
The name Ravens was inspired by the poetry of the famous former Baltimore resident Edgar Allan Poe. Ravens can be taught to speak. Poe's raven is thought to have been inspired by the raven Grip in Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. Dickens' bird has many words and comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe felt that Dickens did not make enough of the bird's dramatic qualities.
“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 a minute 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.'" |
The full 18 verse poem:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/poe/theraven.shtml
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