"Edgar Allan Poe - The Premature Burial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition
of absolute abeyance.
In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral
distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms,
of tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea
of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly
Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the
former, the torture of meditation was excessive- in the latter,
supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every
horror of thought, I shook- shook as the quivering plumes upon the
hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with
a struggle that I consented to sleep- for I shuddered to reflect that,
upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when,
finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world
of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing,
hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in
dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was
immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and
profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an
impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.
I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of
him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at
which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then
lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect
my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it
petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:
"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"
"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"
"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the
voice, mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but
am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.- My teeth chatter as I
speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night- of the night
without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou
tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies.
These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me
into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not
this a spectacle of woe?- Behold!"
I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the
wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and
from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I
could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded
bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the
real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered
not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general
sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a
melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And of those
who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed,
in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which
they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said to me as I