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
Ares, 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
Ptolemaeis, 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 coronos, and being of rare workmanship, ship
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. 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 slenders of light. They thus remained burning, all pallid and motionless.
And in the mirror which their luster 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 an acreon which our madness, and drank deeply, although
the purple wine reminded us of blood, For there was yet another tenet 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 happily 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, saying with a loud and sonorous voice, the songs
of the Son of Taos. 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. A while 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 Chaldea, 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 Hallucion, 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 anyone 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, end of shadow, a parable