by Edgar Allan Poe
(1850)
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 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 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 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. 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 of 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.