as under a drunken man. But the most awful of all the ideas that seized on me were drawn from the supernatural. In the vast cavern of the bell hideous faces appeared, and glared down on me with terrifying frowns, or with grinning mockery, still more appalling. At last the Devil himself, accoutered, as in the common description of the evil spirit, with hoof, horn, and tail, and eyes of infernal luster, made his appearance, and called on me to curse God and worship him, who was powerful to save me. This dread suggestion he uttered with the full-toned clangor of the bell. I had him within an inch of me, and I thought on the fate of the Santon Barsisa. Strenuously and desperately I defied him, and bade him be gone. Reason, then, for a moment resumed her sway, but it was only to fill me with fresh terror, just as the lightning dispels the gloom that surrounds the benighted mariner, but to show him that his vessel is driving on a rock, where she must inevitably be dashed to pieces. I found I was becoming delirious, and trembled lest reason should utterly desert me. This is at all times an agonizing thought, but it smote me then with tenfold agony. I feared lest, when utterly deprived of my senses, I should rise; to do which I was every moment tempted by that strange feeling which calls on a man, whose head is dizzy from standing on the battlement of a lofty castle, to precipitate himself from it; and then death would be instant and tremendous. When I thought of this I became desperate; - I caught the floor with a grasp which drove the blood from my nails; and I yelled with the cry of despair. I called for help, I prayed, I shouted: but all the efforts of my voice were, of course, drowned in the bell. As it passed over my mouth, it occasionally echoed my cries, which mixed not with its own sound, but preserved their distinct character. Perhaps this was but fancy. To me, I know, they then sounded as if they were the shouting, howling, or laughing of the fiends with which my imagination had peopled the gloomy cave which swung over me. You may accuse me of exaggerating my feelings; but I am not. Many a scene of dread have I since passed through, but they are nothing to the self-inflicted terrors of this half-hour. The ancients have doomed one of the damned, in their Tartarus, to lie under a rock which every moment seems to be descending to annihilate him; and an awful punishment it would be. But if to this you add a clamor as loud as if ten thousand Furies were howling about you, a deafening uproar banishing reason and driving you to madness, you must allow that the bitterness of the pang was rendered more terrible. There is no man, firm as his nerves may be, who could retain his courage in this situation. In twenty minutes the ringing was done. Half of that time passed over me without power of computation, the other half appeared an age. When it ceased, I became gradually more quiet; but a new fear retained me. I knew that five minutes would elapse without ringing; but at the end of that short time the bell would be rung a second time for five minutes more. I could not calculate time. A minute and an hour were of equal duration. I feared to rise, lest the five minutes should have elapsed, and the ringing be again commenced; in which case I should be crushed, before I could escape, against the walls or framework of the bell. I therefore still continued to lie down, cautiously shifting myself, however, with a careful gliding, so that my eye no longer looked into the hollow. This was of itself a considerable relief. The cessation of the noise had, in a great measure, the effect of stupefying me, for my attention, being no longer occupied by the chimeras I had conjured up, began to flag. All that now distressed me was the constant expectation of the second ringing, for which, however, I settled myself with a kind of stupid resolution. I closed my eyes, and clenched my teeth as firmly as if they were screwed in a vise. At last the dreaded moment came, and the first swing of the bell extorted a groan from me, as they say the most resolute victim screams at the sight of the rack, to which he is for a second time destined. After this, however, I lay silent and lethargic, without a thought. Wrapt in the defensive armor of stupidity, I defied the bell and its intonations. When it ceased, I was roused a little by the hope of escape. I did not, however, decide on this step hastily; but, putting up my hand with the utmost caution, I touched the rim. Though the ringing had ceased, it still was tremulous from the sound, and shook under my hand, which instantly recoiled as from an electric jar. A quarter of an hour probably elapsed before I again dared to make the experiment, and then I found it at rest. I determined to lose no time, fearing that I might have lain then already too long, and that the bell for evening service would catch me. This dread stimulated me, and I slipped out with the utmost rapidity, and arose. I stood, I suppose, for a minute, looking with silly wonder on the place of my imprisonment, penetrated with joy at escaping, but then rushed down the stony and irregular stair with the velocity of lightning, and arrived in the bell ringer's room. This was the last act I had power to accomplish. I leant against the wall, motionless and deprived of thought, in which posture my companions found me when, in the course of a couple of hours, they returned to their occupation. They were shocked, as well they might be, at the figure before them. The wind of the bell had excoriated my face, and my dim and stupefied eyes were fixed with a lackluster gaze in my raw eyelids. My hands were torn and bleeding, my hair disheveled, and my clothes tattered. They spoke to me, but I gave no answer. They shook me, but I remained insensible. They then became alarmed, and hastened to remove me. He who had first gone up with me in the forenoon met them as they carried me through the churchyard, and through him, who was shocked at having, in some measure, occasioned the accident, the cause of my misfortune was discovered. I was put to bed at home, and remained for three days delirious, but gradually recovered my senses. You may be sure the bell formed a prominent topic of my ravings; and, if I heard a peal, they were instantly increased to the utmost violence. Even when the delirium abated, my sleep was continually disturbed by imagined ringings, and my dreams were haunted by the fancies which almost maddened me while in the steeple. My friends removed me to a house in the country, which was sufficiently distant from any place of worship to save me from the apprehensions of hearing the church-going bell; for what Alexander Selkirk, in Cowper's poem, complained of as a misfortune, was then to me as a blessing. Here I recovered; but even long after recovery, if a gale wafted the notes of a peal towards me, I started with nervous apprehension. I felt a Mahometan hatred to all the bell tribe, and envied the subjects of the Commander of the Faithful the sonorous voice of their Muezzin. Time cured this, as it cures the most of our follies; but even at the present day, if by chance my nerves be unstrung, some particular tones of the cathedral bell have power to surprise me into a momentary start. THE BELLS. BY EDGAR A. POE. [EDGAR ALLAN POE: An American poet and author; born at Boston, Mass., 1809. Orphaned in his third year, he was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va., by whom he was sent to school at StokeNewington, near London. He spent a year at the University of Virginia (1826); enlisted as a private in the United States army under an assumed name, becoming sergeant major (1829); and was admitted to West Point (1830), receiving his dismissal the next year. Thrown upon his own resources, he began writing for the papers. Subsequently he became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, in Richmond; was on the staff of The Gentleman's Magazine and Graham's Magazine, in Philadelphia, and the Broadway Journal in New York. He died in a Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849. "The Raven" and "The Bells" are his most popular poems. His fame as a prose writer rests on his tales of terror and mystery.] I. HEAR the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! In the icy air of night! In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II. Hear the mellow wedding bells, - What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! How they ring out their delight! What a liquid ditty floats To the turtledove that listens, while she gloats Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! How it tells Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III. Hear the loud alarum bells, Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! How they scream out their affright! They can only shriek, shriek, shriek, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, How they clang, and clash, and roar! On the bosom of the palpitating air! By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells. Of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! |