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properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium-the bitter lapse into every-day life, the hideous dropping off of the veil.

4. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought, which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it-I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the house of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered.

5. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn, that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down, but with a shudder even more thrilling than before, upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

6. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country-a letter from him, which,

in its wildly-importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.

7. The manuscript gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said—it was the apparent heart that went with his request-which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still consider a very singular

summons.

8. I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the house of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies or of the occupations in which he involved me or led the way. An excited and highly-distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears.

9. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the "Last Waltz of Von Weber." From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered, the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why; from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.

10. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever

mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose, out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

11. I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement.

12. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses were entitled "The Haunted Palace."

Edgar A. Poe.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. From "The Fall of the House of Usher," in which Poe describes the death of Usher, and the mysterious sinking of his house into the waters of the tarn. This extract contains the passages from

the opening of the story (1 to 7), and from the middle (8 to 12), introductory to the poem, "The Haunted Palace." The poem reflects the coloring and outline of the story, just as a placid lake reflects the tints and contour of the mountains that surround it. (See XLI., note.) It is almost a deep allegory, descriptive of the ruin stealing upon a gifted but intemperate man. Fuseli (10), the celebrated painter, lived and died in London, though Swiss by birth. II. Feat'-ūreş, sědg'-eş, hîd'-e-oŭs, veil, i'-çi-ness, rẹined (rānd), lus'-tre, măn'-sion, sŏl'-emn (-em), sul-phu'-re-oŭs, vague'-ness (våg'-), awe, gui-tär' (gi-), im-pròmp'-tüş, im-prov'-i-sa'-tion, rhǎp'-so-dies. III. Explain the s in features. What is the abbreviation for "manuscript"?

IV. Glimpse, vacant, depression, opium, goading, annihilate, lurid, tarn, inverted, sojourn, boon, improvised, perversion, amplification, educe, hypochondriac, morbid, fervid, fantasias, artificial.

V. Note (3) the reference, by way of comparison, of his sensations to the collapse that follows opium intoxication. (The whole story is colored with a sort of delirium tremens.) Note the "eye-like" windows repeated (3 and 5), and remember it in reading "The Haunted Palace," whose windows are also eyes. The allusion to the waltz can be followed up to advantage as a hint for the rhythm of "The Haunted Palace." Note the hint at interpretation which Poe gives us-" Mystic current of its meaning" (12).

LXXXIV. THE HAUNTED PALACE.

1. In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace,
Radiant palace, reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,
It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

2. Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This-all this-was in the olden
Time, long ago);

And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

3. Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tunéd law. Round about a throne where sitting (Porphyrogene),

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

4. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace-door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, 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.

5. 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.

6. And travelers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;

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