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she stands without the door

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"Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them --many, many days ago --yet I dared not --I dared not speak! And now --to-night --Ethelred --ha! ha! --the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! --say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? MADMAN!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul --"MADMAN! I TELL YOU THAT SHE NOW STANDS WITHOUT THE DOOR!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell --the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust --but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.

E.A. Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher

Such an epic story, fully written in the sense of the dark romanticism. :aww: When I read this scene, I just HAD to paint something about it. So we see (from left to right): Roderick Usher, Madeleine Usher and the narrator with the 'Mad Trist' slipping out of his hand.

Please also look at ~Nx3Fox 's illustration to the same story: thanks!
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EmmetEarwax's avatar
The book in the narrator's hand is "The Mad Tryst" by Sir Lancelot Canning. Three quotations from this medieval fantasy alone exist, and ever had existed. Like the Ndecronomicon, Poe invented and "quoted" from imaginary books.