Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the

  true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing

  of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in

  what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied

  in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt

  it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his

  moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that

  peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart

  from all other human beings, than by calling it a _habit_ of intense

  and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions -

  intruding upon his moments of dalliance - and interweaving itself

  with his very flashes of merriment - like adders which writhe from

  out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples

  of Persepolis.

  I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the

  mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted

  upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation - a

  degree of nervous _unction_ in action and in speech - an unquiet

  excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times

  unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm.

  Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose

  commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening

  in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a

  visiter, or to sounds which must have had existence in his

  imagination alone.

  It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent

  abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar

  Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian

  tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage

  underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third

  act - a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement - a passage

  which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a

  thrill of novel emotion - no woman without a sigh. The whole page

  was blotted with fresh tears ; and, upon the opposite interleaf,

  were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different

  from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some

  difficulty in recognising it as his own : -

  Thou wast that all to me, love,

  For which my soul did pine -

  A green isle in the sea, love,

  A fountain and a shrine,

  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers ;

  And all the flowers were mine.

  Ah, dream too bright to last !

  Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise

  But to be overcast !

  A voice from out the Future cries,

  "Onward ! " - but o'er the Past

  (Dim gulf ! ) my spirit hovering lies,

  Mute - motionless - aghast !

  For alas ! alas ! with me

  The light of life is o'er.

  "No more - no more - no more,"

  (Such language holds the solemn sea

  To the sands upon the shore,)

  Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

  Or the stricken eagle soar !

  Now all my hours are trances ;

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where the dark eye glances,

  And where thy footstep gleams,

  In what ethereal dances,

  By what Italian streams.

  Alas ! for that accursed time

  They bore thee o'er the billow,

  From Love to titled age and crime,

  And an unholy pillow ! -

  From me, and from our misty clime,

  Where weeps the silver willow !

  That these lines were written in English - a language with which I

  had not believed their author acquainted - afforded me little matter

  for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his

  acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them

  from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery ; but

  the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement.

  It had been originally written _London_, and afterwards carefully

  overscored - not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from

  a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned me no little amazement ;

  for I well remember that, in a former conversation with a friend, I

  particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the

  Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous to her marriage had

  resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to

  understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain.

  I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard,

  (without, of course, giving credit to a report involving so many

  improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak, was not only by

  birth, but in education, an _Englishman_.

  * * * * * * * * *

  "There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice

  of the tragedy - "there is still one painting which you have not

  seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length

  portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

  Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her

  superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me

  the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before

  me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was

  beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible

  anomaly !) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found

  inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay

  folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a

  curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible,

  barely touched the earth ; and, scarcely discernible in the

  brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her

  loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My

  glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the

  vigorous words of Chapman's _Bussy D'Ambois_, quivered instinctively

  upon my lips :

  "He is up

  There like a Roman statue ! He will stand

  Till Death hath made him marble !"

  "Come," he said at length, turning towards a table of richly

  enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets

  fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases,

  fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground

  of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be

  Johannisberger. "Come," he said, abruptly, "let us drink ! It is

  early - but let us drink. It is _indeed_ early," he continued,

  musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment

  ring with the first hour after sunrise : "It is _indeed_ early - but

  what matters it ? let us drink ! Let us pour out an offering to yon

  solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue

  !" And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid

  succession several goblets of the wine.

  "To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
r />   conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the

  magnificent vases - "to dream has been the business of my life. I

  have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In

  the heart of Venice could I have erected a better ? You behold

  around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The

  chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the

  sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the

  effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and

  especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the

  contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist ; but

  that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now

  the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit

  is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me

  for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now

  rapidly departing." He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his

  bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At

  length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the

  lines of the Bishop of Chichester :

  _"Stay for me there ! I will not fail_

  _To meet thee in that hollow vale."_

  In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw

  himself at full-length upon an ottoman.

  A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at

  the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second

  disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room,

  and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent

  words, "My mistress ! - my mistress ! - Poisoned ! - poisoned !

  Oh, beautiful - oh, beautiful Aphrodite !"

  Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the

  sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were

  rigid - his lips were livid - his lately beaming eyes were riveted in

  _death_. I staggered back towards the table - my hand fell upon a

  cracked and blackened goblet - and a consciousness of the entire and

  terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

  ~~~ End of Text ~~~

  ======

  THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

  Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores

  Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.

  Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,

  Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

  [_Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to he erected upon the

  site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris_.]

  I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at

  length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses

  were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was

  the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that,

  the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy

  indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution --

  perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel.

  This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for

  a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips

  of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than

  the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to

  grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of

  firmness -- of immoveable resolution -- of stern contempt of human

  torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still

  issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I

  saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no

  sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror,

  the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which

  enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon

  the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect

  of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me;

  but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my

  spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched

  the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became

  meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them

  there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a

  rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in

  the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long

  before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at

  length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges

  vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into

  nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness

  supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing

  descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night

  were the universe.

  I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was

  lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even

  to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In

  delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! even in the grave

  all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from

  the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some

  dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been)

  we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the

  swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or

  spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It

  seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could

  recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions

  eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is -- what?

  How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb?

  But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are

  not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come

  unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned,

  is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in

  coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad

  visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the