Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/55

 and indescribable awe at the thought of that mysterious waking sleep, that powerless and dim vitality, in which “the dead” are presumed, according to our popular theology, to await “the general resurrection at the last day.” What wonder that the phantoms of “Shadow” and “Silence,” once evoked there, could never be exorcised! What wonder that “the fable which the Demon told in the shadow of the tomb” haunted him forever!

“Now there are strange tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi—glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty Sea—and of the Genii that overruled the sea and the earth and the lofty heaven; there was much lore, too, in the sayings of the Sybils. And holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona—but, ''as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all! And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and''