Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
Page 63
care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some
trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon
to regard me as irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as
I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very
protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me
altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the most
solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no
circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so
materially advanced as to render farther preservation impossible.
And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason -- would
accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate
precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled
as to admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest
pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would
cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for
the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for
food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my
reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was provided
with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the
addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the
body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this,
there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope
of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the
coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But,
alas? what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even
these well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost
agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!
There arrived an epoch -- as often before there had arrived -- in
which I found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the
first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly -- with a
tortoise gradation -- approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal
day. A torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No
care -- no hope -- no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing
in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or
tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal
period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings
are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into non-entity;
then a sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an eyelid,
and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and
indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the
heart. And now the first positive effort to think. And now the first
endeavor to remember. And now a partial and evanescent success. And
now the memory has so far regained its dominion, that, in some
measure, I am cognizant of my state. I feel that I am not awaking
from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to
catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my
shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger -- by the one
spectral and ever-prevalent idea.
For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without
motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make
the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate -- and yet there was
something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair -- such
as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being -- despair
alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of
my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark -- all dark. I knew that the
fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed.
I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties
-- and yet it was dark -- all dark -- the intense and utter
raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.
I endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved
convulsively together in the attempt -- but no voice issued from the
cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some
incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every
elaborate and struggling inspiration.
The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that
they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I
lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar my sides were,
also, closely compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of
my limbs -- but now I violently threw up my arms, which had been
lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They struck a solid wooden
substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more
than six inches from my face. I could no longer doubt that I reposed
within a coffin at last.
And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope
-- for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic
exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists
for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled
for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could
not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so
carefully prepared -- and then, too, there came suddenly to my
nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth. The conclusion was
irresistible. I was not within the vault. I had fallen into a trance
while absent from home-while among strangers -- when, or how, I could
not remember -- and it was they who had buried me as a dog -- nailed
up in some common coffin -- and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into
some ordinary and nameless grave.
As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost
chambers of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this
second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or
yell of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterranean
Night.
"Hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply.
"What the devil's the matter now!" said a second.
"Get out o' that!" said a third.
"What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a
cattymount?" said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken
without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very
rough-looking individuals. They did not arouse me from my slumber --
for I was wide awake when I screamed -- but they restored me to the
full possession of my memory.
This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a
friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down
the banks of the James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken
by a storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream,
and laden with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter.
We made the best of it, and passed the night on board. I slept in one
of the only two berths in the vessel -- and the berths of a sloop of
sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be described. That which I
occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen
inches. The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was
precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to
squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the whole of my
vision -- for it was no dream, and no nightmare -- arose naturally
from the circumstances of my position -- from my ordinary bias of
thought -- and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of
collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a
long time after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were the
crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the
load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a
silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my
customary nightcap.
The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the
time, to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully -- they were
inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very
excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired
tone -- acquired temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I
breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than
Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no
"Night Thoughts" -- no fustian about churchyards -- no bugaboo tales
-- such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's
life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel
apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of
which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of
our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell -- but the
imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every
cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be
regarded as altogether fanciful -- but, like the Demons in whose
company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or
they will devour us -- they must be suffered to slumber, or we
perish.
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THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM
The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut.
The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light.
The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew.
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.
Giles Fletcher.
FROM his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend
Ellison along. Nor do I use the word prosperity in its mere worldly
sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I
speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of
Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet -- of exemplifying by
individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the
perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have
seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden
principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his
career has given me to understand that in general, from the violation
of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind
-- that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought
elements of content -- and that, even now, in the present darkness
and madness of all thought on the great question of the social
condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under
certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.
With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued,
and thus it is worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment
which distinguished his life was, in great measure, the result of
preconcert. It is indeed evident that with less of the instinctive
philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of
experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the
very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of
unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments. But it
is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of
my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four
elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That
which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely
physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said,
"attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name." He instanced
the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the
earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered
happier than others. His second condition was the love of woman. His
third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of
ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held
that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness
was in proportion to the spirituality of this object.
Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts
lavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace and beauty he
exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which the
acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a
necessity. His family was one of the most illustrious of the empire.
His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. His
possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of his
majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of
fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social
world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the
moral constitution of those who are their objects.
It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison's coming of
age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison.
This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no
immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to
accumulate for a century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously
directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the
aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of
Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. Many