A Classic Crime Collection by Edgar Allan Poe Page A

flowing
    And sparkling evermore,
    A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
    Was but to sing,
    In voices of surpassing beauty,
    The wit and wisdom of their king.
    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 travellers 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 ofits novelty (for other men * 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 sentence 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 moulded 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” of Gresset; the “Belphegor” of Machiavelli; the “Heaven and Hell” of Swedenborg; the “Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm” of Holberg; the “Chiromancy” of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of Dela Chambre; the “Journey into the Blue Distance” of Tieck; and the “City ofthe Sun” of Campanella. 12 One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the “Directorium Inquisitorium,” by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the oldAfrican Satyrs and Œgipans, 13 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
Vigiliœ Mortuorum Secundum ChorumEcclesiœ Maguntinœ.
14
    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