1839
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
by Edgar Allan Poe
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
De Beranger.
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant
eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can
compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the
after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into
everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium
--the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of
the veil.
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