The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4Poe, Edgar Allan
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American; Short stories
The ticking of the machinery amused me. Amused me, I say, for my
sensations now bordered upon perfect happiness, and the most
trifling circumstances afforded me pleasure. The eternal
click-clak, click-clak, click-clak of the clock was the most
melodious of music in my ears, and occasionally even put me in
mind of the graceful sermonic harangues of Dr. Ollapod. Then
there were the great figures upon the dial-plate—how intelligent
how intellectual, they all looked! And presently they took to
dancing the Mazurka, and I think it was the figure V. who
performed the most to my satisfaction. She was evidently a lady
of breeding. None of your swaggerers, and nothing at all
indelicate in her motions. She did the pirouette to
admiration—whirling round upon her apex. I made an endeavor to
hand her a chair, for I saw that she appeared fatigued with her
exertions—and it was not until then that I fully perceived my
lamentable situation. Lamentable indeed! The bar had buried
itself two inches in my neck. I was aroused to a sense of
exquisite pain. I prayed for death, and, in the agony of the
moment, could not help repeating those exquisite verses of the
poet Miguel De Cervantes:
Vanny Buren, tan escondida
Query no te senty venny
Pork and pleasure, delly morry
Nommy, torny, darry, widdy!
But now a new horror presented itself, and one indeed sufficient
to startle the strongest nerves. My eyes, from the cruel pressure
of the machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets.
While I was thinking how I should possibly manage without them,
one actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep
side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along
the eaves of the main building. The loss of the eye was not so
much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which
it regarded me after it was out. There it lay in the gutter just
under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been
ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and
blinking were never before seen. This behavior on the part of my
eye in the gutter was not only irritating on account of its
manifest insolence and shameful ingratitude, but was also
exceedingly inconvenient on account of the sympathy which always
exists between two eyes of the same head, however far apart. I
was forced, in a manner, to wink and to blink, whether I would or
not, in exact concert with the scoundrelly thing that lay just
under my nose. I was presently relieved, however, by the dropping
out of the other eye. In falling it took the same direction
(possibly a concerted plot) as its fellow. Both rolled out of the
gutter together, and in truth I was very glad to get rid of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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