shadow neither of man nor God—neither God
of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God.
And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and
under the arch of the entablature of the door and
moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary
and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow
rested was, if I remember aright, over against the
feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we,
the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as
it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily
behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually
into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at
length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded
of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation.
And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my
dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and
hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon
the foul Charonian canal.” And then did
we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and
stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for
the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the
tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings,
and varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable,
fell duskily upon our ears in the well remembered and
familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.
* * * *
*
The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags, and
caves are silent.
“LISTEN to me,” said the Demon,
as he placed his hand upon my head. “The
region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya,
by the borders of the river Zaeire. And there
is no quiet there, nor silence.
“The waters of the river have a saffron and
sickly hue; and they flow not onward to the sea, but
palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye
of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion.
For many miles on either side of the river’s
oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies.
They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and
stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly
necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads.
And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out
from among them like the rushing of subterrene water.
And they sigh one unto the other.
“But there is a boundary to their realm—the
boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest.
There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the low
underwood is agitated continually. But there is
no wind throughout the heaven. And the tall primeval
trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing
and mighty sound. And from their high summits,
one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the
roots, strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed
slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud
noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever until
they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the
horizon. But there is no wind throughout the
heaven. And by the shores of the river Zaeire
there is neither quiet nor silence.
