The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4

SHADOW--A PARABLE

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 longsince gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange thingsshall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall passaway, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will besome to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find muchto 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 thanterror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies andsigns had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the blackwings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless,cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspectof ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident thatnow had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourthyear when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoinedwith the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of theskies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only inthe physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, andmeditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noblehall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company ofseven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door ofbrass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being ofrare 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 theywould not be so excluded. There were things around us and about ofwhich I can render no distinct account--things materialand spiritual--heaviness in the atmosphere--a sense ofsuffocation--anxiety--and, above all, that terrible state of existencewhich the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living andawake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weighthung upon us. It hung upon our limbs--upon the household furniture--uponthe goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, andborne down thereby--all things save only the flames of the seven lampswhich illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines oflight, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in themirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony atwhich we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of hisown countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of hiscompanions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way--which washysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon--which are madness; and drankdeeply--although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yetanother tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead,and at full length he lay, enshrouded; the genius and the demon of thescene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance,distorted with the plague, and his eyes, in which Death had but halfextinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest inour merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those whoare to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departedwere upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness oftheir expression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebonymirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son ofTeios. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rollingafar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, andundistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sabledraperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a darkand 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 neitherof man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile amongthe draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon thesurface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless,and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of God--neitherGod of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadowrested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature ofthe door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationaryand remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if Iremember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded.But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came outfrom among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast downour eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony.And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadowits dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, ”I am SHADOW,and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by thosedim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.”And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and standtrembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice ofthe shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude ofbeings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fellduskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of manythousand departed friends.