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The Pit and the Pendulum
by Edgar Allan Poe
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patriâ, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
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[Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected
upon the site of the Jacobin 2 Club House at Paris.]
I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length
unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.
The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct
accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial
voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my
soul the idea of revolution —perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr
of a millwheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet,
for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the
black-robed judges. They appeared to me white—whiter than the sheet upon
which I trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
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intensity of their expression of firmness—of immoveable resolution—of stern
contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were
still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution.
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I saw
them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound
succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly
imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the
apartment. 4 And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table.
At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who
would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my
spirit, and I felt every fiber in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a
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galvanic
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battery, while the angel forms became meaningless specters, with
heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then
there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet

rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it
seemed long before it attained full appreciation; 6 but just as my spirit came at
length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if
magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames
went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared
swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades.
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Then silence,
and stillness, and night were the universe.
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I
had swooned;
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but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost.
What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet
all was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In delirium—no! In a swoon—no!