APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/sphinx/SPHINX

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                            1850

                        THE SPHINX

                    by Edgar Allan Poe


DURING the dread reign of the Cholera in New York, I had accepted the
invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement
of his cottage ornee on the banks of the Hudson. We had here around us
all the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in
the woods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we
should have passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful
intelligence which reached us every morning from the populous city. Not
a day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some
acquaintance. Then as the fatality increased, we learned to expect daily
the loss of some friend. At length we trembled at the approach of every
messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death.
That palsying thought, indeed, took entire posession of my soul. I could
neither speak, think, nor dream of any thing else. My host was of a less
excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits,
exerted himself to sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect
was not at any time affected by unrealities. To the substances of terror
he was sufficiently alive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension.

His endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into
which I had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain
volumes which I had found in his library. These were of a character to
force into germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay
latent in my bosom. I had been reading these books without his
knowledge, and thus he was often at a loss to account for the forcible
impressions which had been made upon my fancy.

A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens- a belief
which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to
defend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions- he
maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters,- I
contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute spontaneity-
that is to say, without apparent traces of suggestion- had in itself the
unmistakable elements of truth, and was entitled to as much respect as
that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of
genius.

The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had
occurred to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had
in it so much of the portentous character, that I might well have been
excused for regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time
so confounded and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could
make up my mind to communicate the circumstances to my friend.

Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at
an open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a
view of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been
denuded by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its
trees. My thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to
the gloom and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from
the page, they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object-
upon some living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly
made its way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the
dense forest below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my
own sanity- or at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes
passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad
nor in a dream. Yet when I described the monster (which I distinctly
saw, and calmly surveyed through the whole period of its progress), my
readers, I fear, will feel more difficulty in being convinced of these
points than even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of
the large trees near which it passed- the few giants of the forest which
had escaped the fury of the land-slide- I concluded it to be far larger
than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because
the shape of the monster suggested the idea- the hull of one of our
seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general
outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a
proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as
the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an
immense quantity of black shaggy hair- more than could have been
supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this
hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike
those of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending
forward, parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a
gigantic staff, thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure
crystal and in shape a perfect prism,- it reflected in the most gorgeous
manner the rays of the declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a
wedge with the apex to the earth. From it there were outspread two pairs
of wings- each wing nearly one hundred yards in length- one pair being
placed above the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each
scale apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. I observed that
the upper and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. But
the chief peculiarity of this horrible thing was the representation of a
Death's Head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and
which was as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of
the body, as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist. While
I regarded the terrific animal, and more especially the appearance on
its breast, with a feeling or horror and awe- with a sentiment of
forthcoming evil, which I found it impossible to quell by any effort of
the reason, I perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis
suddenly expand themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so
loud and so expressive of wo, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell
and as the monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once,
fainting, to the floor.

Upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend of
what I had seen and heard- and I can scarcely explain what feeling of
repugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me.

At length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, we
were sitting together in the room in which I had seen the apparition- I
occupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa
near at hand. The association of the place and time impelled me to give
him an account of the phenomenon. He heard me to the end- at first
laughed heartily- and then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as
if my insanity was a thing beyond suspicion. At this instant I again had
a distinct view of the monster- to which, with a shout of absolute
terror, I now directed his attention. He looked eagerly- but maintained
that he saw nothing- although I designated minutely the course of the
creature, as it made its way down the naked face of the hill.

I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as an
omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. I
threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried
my face in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no
longer apparent.

My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his
demeanor, and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the
conformation of the visionary creature. When I had fully satisfied him
on this head, he sighed deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable
burden, and went on to talk, with what I thought a cruel calmness, of
various points of speculative philosophy, which had heretofore formed
subject of discussion between us. I remember his insisting very
especially (among other things) upon the idea that the principle source
of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of the
understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an
object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity. "To estimate
properly, for example," he said, "the influence to be exercised on
mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of Democracy, the distance of
the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly be accomplished should
not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can you tell me one writer
on the subject of government who has ever thought this particular branch
of the subject worthy of discussion at all?"

He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth
one of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to
exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine
print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the
book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.

"But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the
monster, I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you
what it was. In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account
of the genus Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order
Lepidoptera, of the class of Insecta- or insects. The account runs thus:

"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation
of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of
mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior
by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic;
abdomen pointed, The Death's- headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror
among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it
utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon its corslet.'"

He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himself
accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of
beholding "the monster."

"Ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed- "it is reascending the face of
the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be.
Still, it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it,- for
the fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some
spider has wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the
sixteenth of an inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth
of an inch distant from the pupil of my eye."



                          THE END