Poe, Edgar Allen / 2008-06-09 00:00:00

1842
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
by Edgar Allen Poe
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
(Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to he erected upon
the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris.)
I WAS sick --sick unto death with that long agony; and when they
at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my
senses were leaving me. The sentence --the dread sentence of death
--was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After
that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one
dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of
revolution --perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of
a mill wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no
more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an
exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They
appeared to me white --whiter than the sheet upon which I trace
these words --and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
intensity of their expression of firmness --of immoveable resolution
--of stern contempt of human torture.
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