Morella

by Edgar Allan Poe

　　Itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single.--PLATO: SYMPOS.WITH a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded myfriend Morella. Thrown by accident into her society many years ago,my soul from our first meeting, burned with fires it had never beforeknown; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting tomy spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in no manner definetheir unusual meaning or regulate their vague intensity. Yet we met;and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passionnor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attachingherself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder;it is a happiness to dream.Morella's erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents wereof no common order -- her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this,and, in many matters, became her pupil. I soon, however, found that,perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me anumber of those mystical writings which are usually considered themere dross of the early German literature. These, for what reason Icould not imagine, were her favourite and constant study -- and thatin process of time they became my own, should be attributed to thesimple but effectual influence of habit and example.In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. Myconvictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by theideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to bediscovered, unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in mythoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself implicitly to theguidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into theintricacies of her studies. And then -- then, when poring overforbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within me --would Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from theashes of a dead philosophy some low, singular words, whose strangemeaning burned themselves in upon my memory. And then, hour afterhour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of hervoice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and therefell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardlyat those too unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded intohorror, and the most beautiful became the most hideous, as Hinnonbecame Ge-Henna.It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those disquisitionswhich, growing out of the volumes I have mentioned, formed, for solong a time, almost the sole conversation of Morella and myself. Bythe learned in what might be termed theological morality they will bereadily conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all events, belittle understood. The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modifiedPaliggenedia of the Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines ofIdentity as urged by Schelling, were generally the points ofdiscussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative Morella.That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, trulydefines to consist in the saneness of rational being. And since byperson we understand an intelligent essence having reason, and sincethere is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it isthis which makes us all to be that which we call ourselves, therebydistinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us ourpersonal identity. But the principium indivduationis, the notion ofthat identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me,at all times, a consideration of intense interest; not more from theperplexing and exciting nature of its consequences, than from themarked and agitated manner in which Morella mentioned them.But, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wife'smanner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the touch ofher wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor thelustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did notupbraid; she seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and,smiling, called it fate. She seemed also conscious of a cause, to meunknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard; but she gave me nohint or token of its nature. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily.In time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and theblue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one instantmy nature melted into pity, but in, next I met the glance of hermeaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became giddy with thegiddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomableabyss.Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desirefor the moment of Morella's decease? I did; but the fragile spiritclung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks andirksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over mymind, and I grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of afiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments, whichseemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, likeshadows in the dying of the day.But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morellacalled me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all the earth,and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October leaves ofthe forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen."It is a day of days," she said, as I approached; "a day of all dayseither to live or die. It is a fair day for the sons of earth andlife -- ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death!"I kissed her forehead, and she continued:"I am dying, yet shall I live.""Morella!""The days have never been when thou couldst love me -- but her whomin life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.""Morella!""I repeat I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection --ah, how little! -- which thou didst feel for me, Morella. And when myspirit departs shall the child live -- thy child and mine, Morella's.But thy days shall be days of sorrow -- that sorrow which is the mostlasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees.For the hours of thy happiness are over and joy is not gathered twicein a life, as the roses of Paestum twice in a year. Thou shalt nolonger, then, play the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of themyrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud onthe earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca.""Morella!" I cried, "Morella! how knowest thou this?" but she turnedaway her face upon the pillow and a slight tremor coming over herlimbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more.Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had givenbirth, which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, herchild, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature andintellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed,and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed itpossible to feel for any denizen of earth.But, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, andgloom, and horror, and grief swept over it in clouds. I said thechild grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed,was her rapid increase in bodily size, but terrible, oh! terriblewere the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while watching thedevelopment of her mental being. Could it be otherwise, when I dailydiscovered in the conceptions of the child the adult powers andfaculties of the woman? when the lessons of experience fell from thelips of infancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of maturity Ifound hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? When, I say,all this beeame evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longerhide it from my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions whichtrembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of anature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that mythoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling theoriesof the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the world abeing whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorousseclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety over allwhich concerned the beloved.And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy,and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, dayafter day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child toher mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker theseshadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and moreperplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that hersmile was like her mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered at itstoo perfect identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I couldendure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of mysoul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And in thecontour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair,and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in thesad musical tones of her speech, and above all -- oh, above all, inthe phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved andthe living, I found food for consuming thought and horror, for a wormthat would not die.Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughterremained nameless upon the earth. "My child," and "my love," were thedesignations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the rigidseclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's namedied with her at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to thedaughter, it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief periodof her existence, the latter had received no impressions from theoutward world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrowlimits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptismpresented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, apresent deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at thebaptismal font I hesitated for a name. And many titles of the wiseand beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands,came thronging to my lips, with many, many fair titles of the gentle,and the happy, and the good. What prompted me then to disturb thememory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound,which in its very recollection was wont to make ebb the purple bloodin torrents from the temples to the heart? What fiend spoke from therecesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silenceof the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man thesyllables -- Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features ofmy child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at thatscarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth toheaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestralvault, responded -- "I am here!"Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple soundswithin my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into mybrain. Years -- years may pass away, but the memory of that epochnever. Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine -- butthe hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. And I keptno reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded fromheaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed byme like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only --Morella. The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within myears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore -- Morella. Butshe died; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughedwith a long and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in thechannel where I laid the second. -- Morella.