The Sphinx

by Edgar Allan Poe

　　

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DURING the dread reign of the Cholera in New York, I had accepted theinvitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirementof his _cottage ornee_ on the banks of the Hudson. We had here around usall the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in thewoods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we shouldhave passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful intelligencewhich reached us every morning from the populous city. Not a day elapsedwhich did not bring us news of the decease of some acquaintance. Then asthe fatality increased, we learned to expect daily the loss of somefriend. At length we trembled at the approach of every messenger. The veryair from the South seemed to us redolent with death. That palsyingthought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could neither speak,think, nor dream of any thing else. My host was of a less excitabletemperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted himselfto sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect was not at any timeaffected by unrealities. To the substances of terror he was sufficientlyalive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension.His endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into whichI had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain volumes whichI had found in his library. These were of a character to force intogermination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in mybosom. I had been reading these books without his knowledge, and thus hewas often at a loss to account for the forcible impressions which had beenmade upon my fancy.A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens -- a beliefwhich, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed todefend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions -- hemaintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters, -- Icontending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute spontaneity-that is to say, without apparent traces of suggestion -- had in itself theunmistakable elements of truth, and was entitled to as much respect asthat intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius.The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurredto myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it somuch of the portentous character, that I might well have been excused forregarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confoundedand bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mindto communicate the circumstances to my friend.Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at anopen window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a viewof a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denudedby what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. Mythoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloomand desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from the page,they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object -- upon someliving monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its wayfrom the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense forestbelow. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own sanity -- orat least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes passed before Isucceeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor in a dream. Yetwhen I described the monster (which I distinctly saw, and calmly surveyedthrough the whole period of its progress), my readers, I fear, will feelmore difficulty in being convinced of these points than even I did myself.Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of thelarge trees near which it passed -- the few giants of the forest which hadescaped the fury of the land-slide -- I concluded it to be far larger thanany ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because theshape of the monster suggested the idea- the hull of one of ourseventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the generaloutline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of aproboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as thebody of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an immensequantity of black shaggy hair- more than could have been supplied by thecoats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardlyand laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wildboar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward, parallelwith the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirtyor forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in shape aperfect prism, -- it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of thedeclining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to theearth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings- each wing nearlyone hundred yards in length -- one pair being placed above the other, andall thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten ortwelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper and lower tiers ofwings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief peculiarity of thishorrible thing was the representation of a Death's Head, which coverednearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately tracedin glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had beenthere carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded the terrificanimal, and more especially the appearance on its breast, with a feelingor horror and awe -- with a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which I foundit impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the hugejaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, andfrom them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of wo, that itstruck upon my nerves like a knell and as the monster disappeared at thefoot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to the floor.Upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend ofwhat I had seen and heard -- and I can scarcely explain what feeling ofrepugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me.At length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, wewere sitting together in the room in which I had seen the apparition -- Ioccupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa nearat hand. The association of the place and time impelled me to give him anaccount of the phenomenon. He heard me to the end -- at first laughedheartily -- and then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as if myinsanity was a thing beyond suspicion. At this instant I again had adistinct view of the monster- to which, with a shout of absolute terror, Inow directed his attention. He looked eagerly -- but maintained that hesaw nothing- although I designated minutely the course of the creature, asit made its way down the naked face of the hill.I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as anomen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. Ithrew myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried myface in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no longerapparent.My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his demeanor,and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the conformation of thevisionary creature. When I had fully satisfied him on this head, he sigheddeeply, as if relieved of some intolerable burden, and went on to talk,with what I thought a cruel calmness, of various points of speculativephilosophy, which had heretofore formed subject of discussion between us.I remember his insisting very especially (among other things) upon theidea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay inthe liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value theimportance of an object, through mere mis-admeasurement of itspropinquity. "To estimate properly, for example," he said, "the influenceto be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion ofDemocracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possiblybe accomplished should not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet canyou tell me one writer on the subject of government who has ever thoughtthis particular branch of the subject worthy of discussion at all?"He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth oneof the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then toexchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fineprint of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening thebook, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before."But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the monster,I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you what it was.In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of the genusSphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera, of the classof Insecta -- or insects. The account runs thus:"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallicappearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation ofthe jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles anddowny palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair;antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, TheDeath's -- headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, attimes, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia ofdeath which it wears upon its corslet.'"He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himselfaccurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of beholding"the monster.""Ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed -- "it is reascending the face ofthe hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be. Still,it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it, -- for thefact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider haswrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the sixteenth of aninch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inchdistant from the pupil of my eye."

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