What are the four questions the narrator asks the Raven?

The speaker in "The Raven" asks the bird if there's anything that will ease his heartache, and if there's any chance he'll see his lost love in the afterlife.

Let's check out the details of these two questions:

1. In the fourth-to-last stanza, the speaker asks the raven:

Is there- is there balm in Gilead?

What he means is, "Is there anything that will comfort my soul?" We know that the speaker is in a deep depression brought on by grief over the death of his love, Lenore, so by asking if there's balm in Gilead, he's asking if there's anything that will soothe his pain or offer relief from his profound sadness.

You'll notice that this is not a very specific question. (It's a reference to the Bible, in the book of Jeremiah, when someone originally spoke that question when demanding to know why the "daughter of his people" hadn't yet been healed.)

2. In the third-to-last stanza, the speaker gets more specific and asks the bird if there's a chance that he can see his beloved Lenore in the afterlife. In other words, he's asking if it's true that his soul and the soul of Lenore will once again be joined after death.

I suppose if you want to be very picky, you could say the speaker doesn't really ask a question but instead makes a demand for information in the form of "Tell me..."

Anyway, here's how he requests this final piece of information:

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- 

Of course, the bird's answer is "no" ("nevermore") and it upsets the speaker so much that he yells and tries to get the bird to leave, but it won't.

What six questions does the narrator ask the raven in "The Raven"?

"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe opens with the narrator trying unsuccessfully to distract himself from thinking about how sad he is over the death of his beloved Lenore. He briefly smiles when he is distracted by surprise as a raven suddenly knocks at his window and flies inside.

The narrator comments on how serious and spooky ("grim" and "ghastly") yet regal ("stately") the bird is and then asks his first question: "Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Throughout the poem, the raven answers his questions and statements with only the single word "Nevermore!" At first, the narrator simply takes the reply as a funny name for a bird and is disappointed that the bird says nothing else.

When the narrator comments that the raven will likely leave because "other friends have flown before," the raven repeats, "Nevermore." It is effectively saying that it will never leave. This is even more jarring, but the narrator finds it amusing again, at least until his thoughts drift inevitably back to lost Lenore.

The narrator next says aloud that the raven was sent by God as "respite and nepenthe, from [his] memories of Lenore" to help him forget his grief. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, nepenthe is a "potion used by the ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow." The raven immediately denies it by repeating, "Nevermore."

When the narrator hears the bird offers no hope of a break from his deep sadness, he demands it answer another question: "Is there—is there balm in Gilead?" This is a reference to a Bible passage, Jeremiah, which said that even if there is balm in Gilead, it does no good. The narrator is asking a hopeless question, which gets the hopeless answer "Nevermore."

The narrator the asks if he will ever see Lenore and hold her again in "Aidenn" or Eden, the blessed afterlife promised to those who accept Jesus Christ's salvation in Christianity. The bird again says "Nevermore." This might suggest that Eden isn't waiting for Lenore, that she isn't there, or that the narrator will not be welcome. In any case, not having that reunion waiting in the future upsets the narrator badly.

The narrator then shrieks for the bird to leave and take its "beak from out [his] heart" (that is, to stop deeply upsetting him). As it implied before, however, the bird is not willing to leave. It says again, "Nevermore." Rather than being the distraction the narrator hoped for, the raven turned out to be the cause of an even more complete despair and hopelessness than the grief he was feeling at the beginning of the poem.

What questions does the poet ask the raven in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"?

"The Raven" is unquestionably the most famous poem written by Edgar Allan Poe, probably at least in part because of its form and structure--and a talking raven is intriguing, as well. The speaker of the poem (the "I" we meet in the first line) is a young man, a student, who is sitting in his library one night, pondering the loss of his beloved lover, Lenore. A raven shows up and the man is startled from his despondent reverie; a conversation of sorts ensues.

Though the man is startled by the talking bird, he begins to ask the raven some questions. It soon becomes clear that the bird can only speak, or at least answer, one word; nevertheless, the man continues to ask the raven some questions.

The first seven stanzas are the precursor to the man-bird exchange. It is late and he is dreaming and sleeping when he hears a tapping at the door. Because he has been dreaming of her, his first thought is that Lenore has come back for a visit. The bird comes in and settles himself above the door on a bust. 

Starting in stanza eight, the man conducts his rather one-sided dialogue with the raven. The first question he asks the bird is his name. The answer: "Nevermore." The next stanza contains an implied question:

"Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

The implied question seems to be will the bird leave him like all his "hopes" have. Again the answer is simple: "Nevermore." 

At first the man suspects that this is a tame raven that has been taught this one word from its owner, but then he sits and ponders and his thoughts again lead him to his feelings about Lenore. His next question is more of a hope than an actual question:

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!"

The man wants to know whether the gods have sent him some relief from his sorrow, but of course the raven has only one answer: "Nevermore."

Then he cries out in desperation and begs the bird to tell him whether such relief even exists, if there is such a thing:

"...tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!" 

In other words, is there any hope that his grief will ever be assuaged, he asks--knowing by now the painful answer to his painful question. "Nevermore."

The man's final question is rather horrible, because we already know the depth of his torment and we know there is no relief but he is compelled to ask anyway:

"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?"

Will he be reconnected with his lost love, even in Eden (a derivative of "Aiden")? Nope.

In the next-to-the-last stanza the man commands the bird to leave, which might also be considered a question, though it is framed as a statement. He tells the bird to leave, to

"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

In other words, he asks the bird if he will leave, and of course the answer is exactly what both the reader and the man expect: "Nevermore."

To some degree, all the man's questioning is torturous and futile, because the raven only serves as a confirmation of what he already knows: his love is gone forever. In another way, this rather odd dialogue is healthy for the man, as he is forcing himself to face the sad reality that his love is gone and he will always feel the loss.