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V

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI

And travelers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
to express the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion.
The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
collocation of these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as
well as in that of the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the
decayed trees which stood around--above all, in the long-undisturbed
endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was
to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual
yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the
waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
molded the destinies of his family, and which made _him_ what I now
saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
none.

Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_[13] of Gresset; the
_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by
Holberg; the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndagine, and
of De la Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of
Tieck[19]; and the _City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite
volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium
Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican Eymeric de Cironne; and there were
passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22] about the old African Satyrs and
Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the
_Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.[24]

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by
consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of
the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of
my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as
at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually
sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for
we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
possible, a more ghastly line--but the luminousness of his eye had
utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
terrified--that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet
impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I
struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to
the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the
dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath
of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and,
at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the
intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--I know not why, except
that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite
sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,
I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was,
as usual, cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad
hilarity in his eyes--and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
demeanor. His air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the
solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
as a relief.

"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared
about him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen
it?--but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no
glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the
lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
mansion.

"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly
origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement--the
air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen; and so we will
pass away this terrible night together."

The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
thus:--

"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings
of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and
reverberated throughout the forest."

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very
remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears
what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
disturbed, me. I continued the story:--

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
of shining brass with this legend enwritten:--

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.

"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
of it, the like whereof was never before heard."

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he
was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
proceeded:--

"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days
ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!---the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
heart? Madman!"--here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker
pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those
doors there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
the threshold--then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
widened--there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb
of the satellite burst at once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw
the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting
sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn
at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
"_House of Usher_."


NOTES

[1] _The Fall of the House of Usher_ was written in 1839 and published
at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
Arabesque.

[2] 70: Motto de Beranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."

[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.

[4] 76:7 ennuye. Mentally wearied or bored.

[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.

[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
her features,--all, in their very minutest development, were
those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were
identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling
of stupor," etc.

[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
music.

[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).

[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
Academy in London (1741-1825).

[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the _Baltimore
Museum_ for April, 1839.

[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.

[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.

[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
(1709-1777).

[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
(1469-1527).

[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
Swedenborg (1688-1772).

[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).

[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
Robert Fludd (1574-1637).

[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indagine and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.

[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).

[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
(1568-1639).

[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the
methods of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile,
in 1356.

[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century
A.D. Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
geography of the ancient world.

[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.

[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.

[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.

[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.

[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.


BIOGRAPHY

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of
temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything--to be
consistent in anything. My life has been _whim_--impulse--passion--a
longing for solitude--a scorn of all things present in an earnest
desire for the future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be
happy, but he flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who
remained ignorant of life even unto his death.

He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was
so bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This
action broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his
adopted son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for
his actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr.
Allan became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his
assistance. In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short
time when he was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.

Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that
has brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.

Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.

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