Shadow-A Parable - Edgar Allan Poe

0:00This week at Vons and Albertsons, USDA Choice Tri-Tip Rost untrimmed are 599 per pound, limit 4 roasts with membership wear applicable, and medium-ripe Hassovicados are 99 cents each, with membership wear applicable. Plus Kellogg cereals 8.8 to 16.1 ounces, selected varieties, or peppered farm goldfish, 5.9 to 8 ounces, are 190.9 each when you buy three. Limit 3 offers with membership wear applicable. Visit VonsorAlbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. U.S. LLC

1:00Earn your Farm D in as little as 33 months with West Coast University's hybrid program no bachelor's degree required. Eligible transfer credits may be accepted. West Coast University, as real as it gets. Visit westcoastuniversity.edu. WCU cannot guarantee employment. Shadow, a parable by Edgar Allen Poe, read by Tony Scheinman. Yeh, though I walk through the valley of the shadow, from the psalm of David. Yeh, who read, are still among the living. But I who write, shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed, strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, air these memorials be seen of men. And when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon

2:02in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron. The year had been a year of terror, and a feeling's more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide over sea and land, the black wings of the pestilence were spread abroad. To those nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill. And to me, the Greek oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind. Over some flasks of the red key and wine,

3:04within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Tolomeus, we sat at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance, saved by a lofty door of brass, and the door was fashioned by the artisan coronus, and being of rare workmanship was passin' from within. Black draperies likewise in the gloomy room shut out from our view the moon, the lured stars, and the people of streets. But the boating in the memory of evil, they would not be so excluded. There were things around us, and about of which I can render no distinct account, things material and spiritual, heaviness in the atmosphere, a sense of suffocation, anxiety, and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought like dormant.

4:06A dead weight hung upon us, it hung upon our limbs, upon the household furniture, upon the goblets from which we drank, and all things were depressed and borne down thereby. All things save only the flames of the seven labs which illumined our revel, uproaring themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless, and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat. Each of us there assembled, beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way, which was hysterical, and sang the songs of an acryon which are madness, and drank deeply, although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoylus.

5:08Dead, and at full lengthy lay, enshrouded, the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas, he bore no portion in our mirth, saved that his countenance distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which death had but half extinguish the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may happily take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oynos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, engaging down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice, the songs of the Son of Teos. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes rolling afar off among the sabile draperies of the chamber became weak and undistinguishable, and so faded away. And low, from among those sabile draperies where the sound of the song departed,

6:14there came forth a dark and undefined shadow. A shadow such as the moon when low in heaven might fashion from the figure of a man, but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God nor of any familiar thing, and quivering a while among the draperies of the room, it had length-rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass, but the shadow was vague and formless and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of God, neither God of Greece nor God of Caldaya 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 a right, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded, but we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came

7:19out 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, Oynos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling in its appellation, and the shadow answered, I am shadow, and my dwelling is near to the catacombs of Tulemeas, and hard by those dim planes of Hezuzian, which boyder upon the foul Caronian canal. And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling and shuddering in a gassed, 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 duskly upon our ears, in the well-remembered, and familiar accents

8:21of many thousand departed friends. End of Shadow, A Parable by Edgar Allan Poe. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue urgentcarekit.com slash blue.

9:21It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue urgentcarekit.com slash blue.