100 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
100 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
1850
|
|
|
|
SHADOW- A PARABLE
|
|
|
|
by Edgar Allan Poe
|
|
|
|
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow:
|
|
|
|
Psalm of David.
|
|
|
|
YE who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have
|
|
long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed
|
|
strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many
|
|
centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And,
|
|
when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and
|
|
yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here
|
|
graven with a stylus of iron.
|
|
|
|
The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense
|
|
than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many
|
|
prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and
|
|
land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To
|
|
those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the
|
|
heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among
|
|
others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that
|
|
seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries,
|
|
the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible
|
|
Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not
|
|
greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the
|
|
earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.
|
|
|
|
Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a
|
|
noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a
|
|
company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a
|
|
lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan
|
|
Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within.
|
|
Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our
|
|
view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets- but the
|
|
boding and the memory of Evil they would not be so excluded. There
|
|
were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct
|
|
account- things material and spiritual- heaviness in the atmosphere- a
|
|
sense of suffocation- anxiety- and, above all, that terrible state
|
|
of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly
|
|
living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A
|
|
dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs- upon the household
|
|
furniture- upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were
|
|
depressed, and borne down thereby- all things save only the flames
|
|
of the seven lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves
|
|
in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all
|
|
pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed
|
|
upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there
|
|
assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet
|
|
glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and
|
|
were merry in our proper way- which was hysterical; and sang the songs
|
|
of Anacreon- which are madness; and drank deeply- although the
|
|
purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant
|
|
of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead, and at full length
|
|
he lay, enshrouded; the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he
|
|
bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted
|
|
with the plague, and his eyes, in which Death had but half
|
|
extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such
|
|
interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the
|
|
merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that
|
|
the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to
|
|
perceive the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down
|
|
steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and
|
|
sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually my songs
|
|
they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable
|
|
draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so
|
|
faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the
|
|
sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined
|
|
shadow- a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion
|
|
from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor
|
|
of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the
|
|
draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the
|
|
surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and
|
|
formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of
|
|
God- neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God.
|
|
And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of
|
|
the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but
|
|
there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the
|
|
shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of
|
|
the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having
|
|
seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not
|
|
steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into
|
|
the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking
|
|
some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its
|
|
appellation. And the shadow answered, "I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is
|
|
near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of
|
|
Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal." And then did we,
|
|
the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and
|
|
shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow
|
|
were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings,
|
|
and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly
|
|
upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many
|
|
thousand departed friends.
|
|
|
|
THE END
|
|
.
|