Morella by Edgar Allan Poe: Forbidden Philosophy, Reincarnation & Gothic Terror

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One of my favorite memories of scaring
myself as a child was getting a compilation

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book of Edgar Allan Poe stories from
my elementary school library. It brought me

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so much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home from school with

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that book in my backpack as the
sky was dark and a storm was coming.

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I was in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I

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had a pizza and the books of
Poe. Every so often I'll bring you

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a tale of Poe, and I
hope it gives you that scary fun sense,

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just the same as it does for
me. So listen to these words

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from our sponsors, and when the
clock strikes midnight, the story will begin.

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Marella, a Tale by Edgar Allan
Poe, read by Enrique Couto,

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with a feeling of deep but most
singular affection, I regarded my friend Marilla,

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thrown by accident into her society many
years ago. My soul from our

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first meeting burned with fires it had
never before known. But the fires were

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not of eros and bitter and Tormenting
to my spirit was the gradual conviction that

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I could, in no manner define
their unusual meaning or regulate their vague intensity.

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Yet we met, and fate bound
us together at the altar, and

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I never spoke of love or thought
of passion. She, however, shunned

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society, and attaching herself to me
alone rendered me happy. It is a

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happiness to wonder, it is a
happiness to dream. Morella's erudition was profound

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as I hoped to live. Her
talents were of no common order. Her

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powers of mind were gigantic. I
felt this, and in many matters became

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her pupil. I soon, however, found that Marella, perhaps on account

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of her Pressburg education, laid before
me a number of those mystical writings which

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are usually considered the mere dross of
the early German literature. These, for

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what reasons I could not imagine,
were her favorite and constant study. And

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that in process of time they became
my own, should be attributed to the

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simple but effectual influence of habit and
example. In all this, If I

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err not, my reason had little
to do. My convictions, or I

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forget myself, were in no manner
acted upon by the imagination. Nor was

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any tincture of the mysticism which I
read to be discovered. Unless I am

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greatly mistaken, either in my deeds
or in my thoughts. Feeling deeply persuaded

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of this, I abandoned myself more
implicitly to the guidance of my wife,

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and entered with a bolder spirit into
the intricacies of her studies. And then,

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then, when poring over forbidden pages, I felt the spirit kindle within

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me. Would Marilla place her cold
hand upon my own, and rake up

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from the ashes of a dead philosophy, some low singular words whose strange meaning

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burnt themselves in upon my memory.
And then, hour after hour would I

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linger by her side and dwell upon
the music of her thrilling voice, until

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at length its melody was tinged with
terror and fell like a shadow upon my

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soul, and I grew pale and
shuddered inwardly at those two unearthly tones.

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And thus joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most

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hideous, as henmen became Guehenna.
It is unnecessary to state the exact character

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of these disquisitions, which, growing
out of the volumes I have mentioned,

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formed for so long a time almost
the sole conversation of Marilla and myself by

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the learned in what might be termed
theological morality, they will be readily conceived,

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and by the unlearned they would,
at all events be little understood.

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The wild pantheism of Fichi, the
modified palangnesia of the Pythagoreans, and above

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all, the doctrines of identity as
urged by Shelling, were generally the points

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of discussion, presenting the most of
beauty to the imaginative Marilla. That identity

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which is not improperly called personal,
I think, mister Locke, truly defines

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to consist in the sameness of a
rational being. And since by person we

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understand an intelligent essence having reason,
and since there is a consciousness which always

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accompanies thinking, it is this which
makes us all to be that which we

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call ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from
other beings that think, and giving us

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our personal identity. But the principum
individualists. The notion that identity which at

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death is or is not lost forever, was to me at all times a

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consideration of intense interest, not more
from the mystical and exciting nature of its

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consequences than from the marked and agitated
manner in which Morella mentioned them. But

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indeed the time had now arrived,
when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed

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me as a spell. I could
no longer bear the touch of her wan

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fingers, nor the low tone of
her musical language, nor the luster of

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her melancholy eyes. And she knew
all this, but did not upbraid.

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She seemed conscious of my weakness or
my folly, and smiling called it fate.

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She seemed also conscious of a cause
to me unknown for the gradual alienation

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of my regard, But she gave
me no hint or token of its nature.

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Yet was she woman, and pined
away daily. In time, the

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crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale

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forehead became prominent, and one instant
my nature melted into pity. But in

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the next I met the glance of
her meaning eyes, and then my soul

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sickened and became giddy, with the
giddiness of one who gazes downward into some

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dreary and fathomless abyss. All I
then say that I longed with an earnest

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and consuming desire for the moment of
Marilla's decease. I did, But the

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fragile spirit clung to its tenement of
clay for many days, for many weeks,

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and irksome months, until my tortured
nerves obtained the mastery over my mind,

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and I grew furious through delay,
and with the heart of a fiend,

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cursed the days and the hours,
and the bitter moments, which seemed

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to lengthen and lengthen, as her
gentle life declined like shadows in the dying

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of the day. But one autumnal
evening, when the winds lay still in

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heaven, Marilla called me to her
side. There was a dim mist over

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all the earth, and a warm
glow upon the waters, and amid the

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rich october leaves of the forest,
a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen.

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As I came, she was murmuring
in a low undertone which trembl'd with

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fervor, the words of a Catholic
hymn, Santa Maria, turn thine eyes

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upon the sinner's sacrifice of fervent prayer
and humble love from thy holy throne above

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at morn at noon at twilight,
Dim Maria, thou hast heard my hymn

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in joy and woe, in good
and ill, Mother of God, be

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with me still when my hours flew
gently by, and no storms were in

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the sky, my soul, lest
it should truant be thy love did guide

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to thine and thee. Now,
when clouds of fate o'ercast all my present

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and my past, let my future
radiant shine with sweet hopes of THEE and

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thine. It is a day of
days, said Marilla, a day of

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all days, either to live or
die. It is a fair day for

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the sons of earth and life.
Ah more fair for the daughters of heaven

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and death. I turned towards her, and she continued, I am dying,

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yet shall I live? Therefore for
me, Marilla, thy wife,

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hath the Charnel house no terrors mark
me, not even the terrors of the

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worm. The days have never been
when thou couldst love me, but her

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whom in life thou didst abhor in
death, Thou shalt adore Marilla. I

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repeat that I am dying, but
within me as a pledge of that effecttion,

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Ah, how little which you felt
for me, Marilla. And when

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my spirit departs, shall the child
live? Thy child and mine Morella's.

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But thy days shall be days of
sorrow, that sorrow which is the most

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lasting of impressions, as the cypress
is the most enduring of trees. For

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the hours of thy happiness are over, and joy is not gather'd twice in

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a life, as the roses of
pestum twice in a year. Thou shalt

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not then play the tien with time, But being ignorant of the myrtle and

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the vine, thou shalt bear about
with thee thy shroud on earth like the

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muslemin at Mecca Morella. I cried, Marilla, how knowest thou this?

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But she turned away, her face
upon the pillow, and a slight tremor

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coming over her limbs. She thus
died, and I heard her voice no

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more Yet, as she had foretold
her child, to which in dying she

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had given birth, and which breathed
not till the mother breathed no more.

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Her child, a daughter, lived, and she grew strangely in size and

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intellect, and was the perfect resemblance
of her who had departed. And I

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loved her with a love more fervent
and more intense than I believed it possible

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to feel on earth. But ere
long the heaven of this pure affection became

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overcast and gloom and horror, and
grief came over it in clouds, I

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said. The child grew strangely in
stature and intelligence. Strange indeed was her

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rapid increase in bodily size. But
terrible, oh terrible, were the tumultuous

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thoughts which it upon me while watching
the development of her mental being. Could

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it be otherwise? When I daily
discovered in the conceptions of the child the

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adult powers and faculties of the woman, when the lessons of experience fell from

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the lips of infancy, and when
the wisdom or the passions of maturity I

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found hourly gleaming from its full and
speculative eye. When I say all this

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became evident to my appalled senses,
when I could no longer hide it from

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my soul, nor throw it off
from those perceptions which trembled to receive it.

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Is it to be wondered at that
suspicions of a nature fearful and exciting

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crept in upon my spirit, Or
that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the

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wild tales and thrilling theories of the
entombed Marilla. I snatched from the scrutiny

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of the world, a being whom
destiny compelled me to adore, And in

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the rigid seclusion of my ancestral home, I watched with an agonizing anxiety over

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all which concerned my daughter. And
as the years rolled away, and daily

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I gazed upon her eloquent and mild
and holy face, and poured over her

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maturing form, did I discover new
points of resemblance in the child to her

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mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows,

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as it were, of similitude,
and became more full, and more definite,

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and more perplexing, and to me
more terrible in their aspect. For

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that her smile was like her mother's
I could bear, but then I shuddered

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at its too perfect identity. That
her eyes were like Morella's own, I

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could endure. But then they looked
down too often into the depths of my

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soul. With Marilla's intense and bewildering
meaning. And in the contour of the

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high forehead, and in the ringlets
of the silken hair, and in the

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wan fingers which buried themselves therein,
and in the musical tones of her speech,

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and above all, oh above all, in the phrases and expressions of

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the dead on the lips of the
loved and the living. I found food

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for consuming thought, and horror for
a worm that would not die. Thus

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passed away two lustrums of her life. Yet my daughter remained nameless upon the

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earth. My child and my love
were the designations usually prompted by a father's

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affection, and the rigid seclusion of
her days precluded all other intercourse. Marilla's

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name died with her at her death. Of the mother. I had never

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spoken to the daughter. It was
possible to speak. Indeed, during the

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brief period of her existence. The
latter had received no impressions from the outward

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world, but such as might have
been afforded by the narrow limits of her

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privacy. But at length, the
ceremony of baptism presented to my mind,

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in its unnerved and agitated condition,
a present deliverance from the horrors of my

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destiny. And at the baptismal font
I hesitated for a name, and many

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titles of the wise and beautiful of
antique in modern times of my own and

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foreign lands came thronging to my lips, and many many fair titles of the

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gentle, and the happy and the
good. What prompted me then to disturb

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the memory of the buried dead?
What daemon urged me to breathe that sound,

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which, in its very recollection was
won't to make ebb and flow the

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purple blood and tides from the temples
to the heart. What fiend spoke from

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the recesses of my soul? When
amid those dim aisles, and in the

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silence of the night, I shrieked
within the ears of the holy Man the

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syllables Marilla, what more than a
fiend convulsed the features of my child and

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overspread them with the hues of death. As starting at that sound, she

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turned her glassy eyes from the earth
to heaven, and, falling prostrate upon

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the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded, I am here distinct,

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coldly, calmly, distinct, like
a knell of death. Horrible, horrible

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death sank the eternal sounds within my
soul. Years years may roll away,

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but the memory of that epoch never
now. Was I indeed ignorant of the

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flowers and the vine, But the
hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and

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day, and I kept no reckoning
of time or place, And the stars

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of my fate faded from heaven.
And therefore my spirit grew dark, and

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the figures of the earth passed by
me like flitting shadows, and among them

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all I beheld only Marilla. The
winds of the firmament breathed but one sound

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within my ears, and the ripples
upon the sea murmur'd evermore Marilla. But

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she died, and with my own
hands I bore her to the tomb,

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and I laughed with a long and
bitter laugh, as I found no traces

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of the first in the charnel where
I laid the second Marilla