Author Description

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in theautumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in theheavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through asingularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, asthe shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholyHouse of Usher. I know not how it was-but, with the first glimpseof the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. Isay insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that halfpleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mindusually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolateor terrible. I looked upon the scene before me-upon the merehouse, and the simple landscape features of the domain-upon thebleak walls-upon the vacant eye-like windows-upon a few ranksedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with anutter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthlysensation more properly than to the after-dream of the revellerupon opium-the bitter lapse into every-day life-the hideousdropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickeningof the heart-an unredeemed dreariness of thought which nogoading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.What was it-I paused to think-what was it that so unnerved mein the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery allinsoluble;