Speaker 1: 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