In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that of looking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition – for why should I not so term it? – served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.
Prophet!′ said I, ’thing of evil! – prophet still, it bird or devil!
Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!
Here, at last, he is happy.
And who shall calculate the immense influence upon social life – upon arts – upon commerce – upon literature – which will be the immediate result of the great principles of electro-magnetics!
I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.
Immensely tall trunks of trees, gray and leafless, rose up in endless succession as far as the eye could reach. Their roots were concealed in wide-spreading morasses, whose dreary water lay intensely black, still, and altogether terrible, beneath. And the strange trees seemed endowed with a human vitality, and waving to and fro their skeleton arms, were crying to the silent waters for mercy, in the shrill and piercing accents of the most acute agony and despair.
The secret of a poem, no less than a jest’s prosperity, lies in the ear of him that hears it.
But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.
I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
Other friends have flown before – On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.
The look on his face frightened me terribly, but at the same time I was pleased not to be alone any more.
FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not – and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.
It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea...
No woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon.
Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having existed at any previous period – for the space where eyes should naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level of flesh.
Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use them well; – my vision is the soul.
One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.
I am dying, yet shall I live.