Edgar Allan Poe Collected Works of Poe Volume 3 The Raven Edition

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shall be days of sorrow -- that sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most
enduring of trees. For the hours of thy happiness are over and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses
of Paestum twice in a year. Thou shalt no longer, then, play the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the
myrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca."
"Morella!" I cried, "Morella! how knowest thou this?" but she turned away her face upon the pillow and a
slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more.
Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not until the mother
breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the
perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it
possible to feel for any denizen of earth.
But, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief swept over
it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed, was her rapid
increase in bodily size, but terrible, oh! terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while
watching the development of her mental being. Could it be otherwise, when I daily discovered in the
conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the woman? when the lessons of experience fell from
the lips of infancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of maturity I found hourly gleaming from its full and
speculative eye? When, I say, all this beeame evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longer hide it
from my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that
suspicions, of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon
the wild tales and thrilling theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the world a
being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an
agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved.
And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and poured
over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the
melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more
definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that her smile was like her
mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I could
endure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense and
CHAPTER XXV 107
bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the
wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all -- oh,
above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for
consuming thought and horror, for a worm that would not die.
Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth. "My
child," and "my love," were the designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the rigid seclusion
of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name died with her at her death. Of the mother I had
never spoken to the daughter, it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of her existence, the
latter had received no impressions from the outward world, save such as might have been afforded by the
narrow limits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and
agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated
for a name. And many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands,
came thronging to my lips, with many, many fair titles of the gentle, and the happy, and the good. What
prompted me then to disturb the memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound,
which in its very recollection was wont to make ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the
heart? What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the
night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables -- Morella? What more than fiend convulsed
the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound,
she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral
vault, responded -- "I am here!"
Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled
hissingly into my brain. Years -- years may pass away, but the memory of that epoch never. Nor was I indeed
ignorant of the flowers and the vine -- but the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. And I
kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew
dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only -- Morella. The
winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured
evermore -- Morella. But she died; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long
and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second. -- Morella.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
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A TALE OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS
DURING the fall of the year 1827, while residing near Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the
acquaintance of Mr. Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every respect, and excited in
me a profound interest and curiosity. I found it impossible to comprehend him either in his moral or his
physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory account. Whence he came, I never ascertained.
Even about his age -- although I call him a young gentleman -- there was something which perplexed me in no
little degree. He certainly seemed young -- and he made a point of speaking about his youth -- yet there were
moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining him a hundred years of age. But in no regard was
he more peculiar than in his personal appearance. He was singularly tall and thin. He stooped much. His
limbs were exceedingly long and emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was absolutely
bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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