On January 29, 1845, an up-and-coming pumpkin-headed writer named Edgar Allan Poe got his poem published in the New York Evening Mirror.

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.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

This Gloomy Gus broods and broods, especially over someone named Lenore, when all of the sudden he comes face to face with … A Talking Bird?!!??! This bird would utter the most memorable line in all of poetry.

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.”

Poe would be paid $9 for its initial publication. Subsequent popularity never brought Poe much wealth either: “I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life—except in hope, which is by no means bankable.”

So today enjoy “The Raven” as it was meant to always be heard on The Avocado…

… narrated by James Earl Jones and Dan Castellaneta on The Simpsons.