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 feeling 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 Aries, 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 Ptolemais, 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 Corinnos, and, being of rare
workmanship, 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; and all things were depressed,
and borne down thereby--all things save only the flames
of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing
themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained
burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which
their lustre 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
Anacreon--which are madness; and drank deeply--although
the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet
another tenant 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 haply 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, sang with
a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. 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 undefiled 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. And quivering
awhile 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 God--neither God of Greece, nor
God of Chaldaea, 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 Helusion 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 any one
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.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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