The Raven (excerpts) / Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more." . . . .
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
Lenore?, This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
"Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.
(from Complete stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 756)
(from The Historian / Elizabeth Kostova)
“My dear and unfortunate successor:
It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself – because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. . . . (p. 5)
[And so began a young scholar’s acquaintance with the legend of Dracula. It was a legend that would haunt him – and stalk him -- for life.]
The painting was a richly hued watercolor. . . . [The artist] had caught a splotch of color that I recognized as the back of my red straw hat, with my father in blurry tan and blue just beyond. . . .But my glance at [the painting] had shown me a lone figure sitting beyond my father, a broad-shouldered, dark-headed figure, a crisp black silhouette among the cheerful colors of awning and tablecloths. That table, I recalled clearly, had been vacant all afternoon.” (p.88)
“When I was five, I would not go to bed willingly because something came into my room. This was a private matter between me and it. If I spoke of it, it would kill me.
It entered the room by flattening itself against the open door and sliding in. It was a transparent, luminous oblong. I could see the door whiten at its touch; I could see the blue wall turn pale where it raced over it, and see the maple headboard of [my sister’s] bed glow. It had two joined parts, a head and a tail, like a Chinese dragon. It found the door, wall, and headboard; and it swiped them, charging them with its luminous glance. . . .
I dared not blink or breathe; I tried to hush my whooping blood.
Every night before it got to me it gave up. . . . I heard the rising roar it made when it died or left. I still couldn’t breathe. I knew. . . it could return again alive that same night.
It was a passing car. . . . When the low roar drew nigh and the oblong slid in the door, I threw my own switches for pleasure. It’s coming after me; it’s a car. . . .”
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