Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-07-19
WORLD FAMOUS STORIES
MORELLA.
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Edgar Allan Poe. ia0a-lS4a was an
Of Fan Of the House Of Usher, Murders
in the Rue Moreue,' etc.
We met. Morela and I, and fate
bound us together at the altar: and
never spoke CT passion nor thought
of love. She. however. stunned So
ciety. and attaching herself to me
alone, rendered me happy. 1t is a
happiness to wonder; it is happi-
ness to dream.
Morellas learning was profound.
She was particularly we'll versed in
mystic things. and I, too, entered into
the intricacies of her studies. We be-
came involved in problems of identity,
and things too deep for human prob
ing. Whether because of this or not,
1 cannot say. but my affection for
my wife waned. She felt it., AS
woman will, and she was pining
evay-dving.
Shall I then say that longed with
an earnest and consuming desire for
the moment of Morellas decsSse! I
did. but the fragile spirit chung to
its tenement of clay for many days,
for many weeks and irkesome months,
until my tortured nerves obtained the
mastery over my mind, and I grew
furious through delay, and. with the
heart of fend cursed the days and
the hours and the bitter moments,
which seemed to lengthen and length
en- as her gentle life declined. like
shadows i'll the dying Of the day.
But one autumnal evening. when
the winds lay still in heaven, Morella
called me to her bedside. There was
a dim mist over all the earth and a
warm glow upon the waters and amid
the rich October leaves Of the forest
q rainbow from the armament had
surely fallen.
ut is q day of days" she said as I
approached-"a day of all DAYS either
to live or die. It Is fair day for the
for the daughters of heaven and DEATH"
I kissed her forehead and she con-
tiued:
7 am dying, yet shall live"
"Morella!"
"The days have never been when
thou couldst love me, but her whom in
life thou didst abhor, in death thou
shalt, adore.
"Morella!"
Il repeat that I am dying, but with
in me is pledge of that atfection-ah,
how little which thou didst feel for
me, Morella, and when my spirit de-
parts shall the child live-thy child and
mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be
Gays of sorrow-that sorrow which is
the most enduring of trees. For the
hours of thy happiness are over, and JOY
is not gathered twice in life Thou
shalt no longer. then. bear about with
thee thy sfroud on earth"
"Morella!" I cried. "Morclla! How
knowest thou this?" But she turned
away her face upon the pillow and.
slight trenlor coming over her limbs,
she thus died. and heard her voice no
more.
Yet, as she had foretold her child,
to which in dying she had given birth,
which breathed not until the mother
breathed no more, her child, a daugh-
ter, lived. And she grew strangely in
stature and intellect and was the per-
feet resemblance Of her who had de-
parted. and I loved her with love
more fervent than I had believed it
possible to feel for any denizen of
earth.
But. ere long the heaven of this pure
affection became darkened, and gloom
and horror and grief swept over it in
clouds. I said the child grew strangely
in stature and intelligence. Strange, in
deed, was her rapid increase in bodily
size. but terrible, oh, terrible were the tu-
multuous thoughts which crowded upon
me while watching the development of
her mind. Could it be otherwise when
l daily discovered in the child the
adult powers Of a woman? When the
lessons of experience fell from the lips
Of infancy? When the wisdom or the
passions of maturity I found hourly
cleaning from its full and speculative
eye?
When. I say. all this became evident
10 may appalled, senses, when could
no longer hide it from my soul. nor
throw it off from those perceptions
which trembled to receive 1t, is it to be
wondered at that suspicious of a nature
fearful and exciting crept in upon my
spirit or that my thoughts fell back
aghast upon the wild tales and thrill
ing theories of the entombed Morella?
I snatched from the scrutiny of the
world being whom destiny compelled
me to adore, and in the rigorous Sc
clusion of my home watched with an
agonizing anxiety over all which con-
cerned the beloved
And as the years rolled away, and
gaSed day after day upon her holy and
mild and eloquent face, day after day
cid discover new points of resenl-
blance in the child of her mother. the
melancholy and the dead. And hourly
grew darker these shadows of likeness,
and more full. and more definite, and
more perplcxing, end more hideously
terribly in their aspect.
That her smile was like her mothers
I could bear, but then shuddered at
its too perfect identity; that her eyes
were like Morella,s I could endure, but
then they too, often looked down into
the depths of my soul with Morellas
own intense and bewildering meaning.
And in the contour of the high fore
head and in the ringlets of the silken
hair and in the wan fingers which
buried themselves therein, and in the
sad musical tones of her speech, and
above all--oh, above all, in the phrases
and expressions Of the dead on the
lips of the loved and the living, found
food for consuming thought and hor-
ror. for worm that would not die.
Thus passed away two lustra of her