By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
  Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
  It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
  Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
  "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
  On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
  And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming
  And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor;
  And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
                                     Shall be lifted--nevermore! The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

October, 1997  [Etext #1064]*




The Masque of the Red Death


The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its
seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and
sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with
dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the
face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid
and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure,
progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an
hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his
dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand
hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his
court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his
castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure,
the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong
and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The
courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and
welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor
egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The
abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might
bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of
itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The
prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were
buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there
were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and
security were within. Without was the "Red Death". It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,
and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince
Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most
unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of
the rooms in which it was held. These were seven--an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista,
while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand,
so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the
case was very different, as might have been expected from the duke's
love of the _bizarre_. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that
the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a
sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel
effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and
narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued
the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose
colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations
of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was
hung, for example in blue--and vividly blue were its windows. The
second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the
panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the
casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth
with white--the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely
shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and
down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same
material and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of the windows
failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
scarlet--a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments
was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden
ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the
suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there
stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of
fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly
illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and
fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect
of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the
blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a
look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of
the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western
wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a
dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the
circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from
the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep
and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that,
at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were
constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to
the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and
there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the
chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew
pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows
as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully
ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians
looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and
folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next
chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and
then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand
and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.