Complete Tales & Poems
VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, September 1975
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by The Modern Library in 1938.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1949.
Complete tales and poems.
I. Title.
PS2600.F75 818’.3’09 75-9566
eISBN: 978-0-307-80853-0
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
TALES
1. The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall
2. The Gold-Bug
3. The Balloon-Hoax
4. Von Kempelen and His Discovery
5. Mesmeric Revelation
6. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
7. The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
8. MS. Found in a Bottle
9. A Descent into the Maelström
10. The Murders in the Rue Morgue
11. The Mystery of Marie Roget
12. The Purloined Letter
13. The Black Cat
14. The Fall of the House of Usher
15. The Pit and the Pendulum
16. The Premature Burial
17. The Masque of the Red Death
18. The Cask of Amontillado
19. The Imp of the Perverse
20. The Island of the Fay
21. The Oval Portrait
22. The Assignation
23. The Tell-Tale Heart
24. The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
25. The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq
26. How to Write a Blackwood Article
27. A Predicament
28. Mystification
29. X-ing a Paragrab
30. Diddling
31. The Angel of the Odd
32. Mellonta Tauta
33. Loss of Breath
34. The Man that Was Used Up
35. The Business Man
36. Maelzel’s Chess-Player
37. The Power of Words
38. The Colloquy of Monos and Una
39. The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
40. Shadow—A Parable
41. Silence—A Fable
42. Philosophy of Furniture
43. A Tale of Jerusalem
44. The Sphinx
45. The Man of the Crowd
46. Never Bet the Devil Your Head
47. “Thou Art the Man”
48. Hop-Frog
49. Four Beasts in One; The Homo-Camelopard
50. Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling
51. Bon-Bon
52. Some Words with a Mummy
53. Review of Stephens’ “Arabia Petræa”
54. Magazine-Writing—Peter Snook
55. The Quacks of Helicon—A Satire
56. Astoria
57. The Domain of Arnheim, or The Landscape Garden
58. Landor’s Cottage
59. William Wilson
60. Berenice
61. Eleonora
62. Ligeia
63. Morella
64. Metzengerstein
65. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
66. The Spectacles
67. The Duc De L Omelette
68. The Oblong Box
69. King Pest
70. Three Sundays in a Week
71. The Devil in the Belfry
72. Lionizing
73. Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
Preface to the Poems
The Poetic Principle
The Rationale of Verse
POEMS
The Raven
Lenore
Hymn
A Valentine
The Coliseum
To Helen
To — —
Ulalume
The Bells
An Enigma
Annabel Lee
To My Mother
The Haunted Palace
The Conqueror Worm
To F—S S. O–D
To One in Paradise
The Valley of Unrest
The City in the Sea
The Sleeper
Silence
A Dream Within a Dream
Dream-Land
To Zante
Eulalie
Eldorado
Israfel
For Annie
To —
Bridal Ballad
To F—
Scenes from “Politian”
POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH
Sonnet—To Science
Al Aaraaf
To the River —
Tamerlane
To —
A Dream
Romance
Fairy-Land
The Lake—To —
Song
To M. L. S—
Spirits of the Dead
To Helen
Evening Star
“The Happiest Day”
Imitation
Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius. Translation from the Greek
Dreams
“In Youth I Have Known One”
A Paean
To Isadore
Alone
About the Author
TALES
THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL
With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
—Tom O’Bedlam’s Song
BY LATE accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected—so entirely novel—so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions—as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.
It appears that on the —— day of ——, (I am not positive about the date,) a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm—unusually so for the season—there was hardly a breath of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud profusely distributed about the blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless, about noon, a slight but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly: the clattering of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and, in an instant afterward, ten thousand faces were upturned toward the heavens, ten thousand pipes descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and a shout, which could be compared to nothing but the roaring of Niagara, resounded long, loudly, and furiously, through all the city and through all the environs of Rotterdam.
The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. From behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the name of all the devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew; no one could imagine; no one—not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk—had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and maintaining an eye steadily upon the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly—then waddled back, grunted, paused, and finally—puffed again.
In the meantime, however, lower and still lower toward the goodly city, came the object of so much curiosity, and the cause of so much smoke. In a very few minutes it arrived near enough to be accurately discerned. It appeared to be—yes! it was undoubtedly a species of balloon; but surely no such balloon had ever been seen in Rotterdam before. For who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon manufactured entirely of dirty newspapers? No man in Holland certainly; yet here, under the very noses of the people, or rather at some distance above their noses was the identical thing in question, and composed, I have it on the very best authority, of the precise material which no one had ever before known to be used for a similar purpose. It was an egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of Rotterdam. As to the shape of the phenomenon, it was even still more reprehensible. Being little or nothing better than a huge fool’s-cap turned upside down. And this similitude was regarded as by no means lessened when, upon nearer inspection, the crowd saw a large tassel depending from its apex, and, around the upper rim or base of the cone, a circle of little instruments, resembling sheep-bells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse.—Suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver hat, with a brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver buckle. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly semed to regard it with eyes of familiarity; while the vrow Grettel Pfaall, upon sight of it, uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise, and declared it to be the identical hat of her good man himself. Now this was a circumstance the more to be observed, as Pfaall, with three companions, had actually disappeared from Rotterdam about five years before, in a very sudden and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this narrative all attempts at obtaining intelligence concerning them had failed. To be sure, some bones which were thought to be human, mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking rubbish, had been lately discovered in a retired situation to the east of the city; and some people went so far as to imagine that in this spot a foul murder had been committed, and that the sufferers were in all probability Hans Pfaall and his associates. But to return.
The balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth a very singular somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon.
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