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The Island of the Fay by Edgar Allan Poe · Audiobooks & Scary Stories

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  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy this reading, which comes from a
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  Speaker 1: work in the public domain, the island of the fay
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  Speaker 1: Edgar allan poe nullus and m Lochus sign genio e
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  Speaker 1: s t servius lung musik, says Marmontel in those comte
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  Speaker 1: moro asterisk one which in all our translations we have
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  Speaker 1: insisted upon calling moral tales, as if in mockery of
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  Speaker 1: their spirit. Lum music asked lo soul, de talents cajus
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  Speaker 1: and de luisman two less outra's viulent to temoins he
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  Speaker 1: here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the
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  Speaker 1: capacity for creating them, no more than any other talent,
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  Speaker 1: is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there
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  Speaker 1: is no second party to appreciate its exercise, and it
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  Speaker 1: is only in common with other talents that it produces
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  Speaker 1: effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea
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  Speaker 1: which the rec hunter has either failed to entertain clearly
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  Speaker 1: or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love
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  Speaker 1: of point is doubtless us the very tenable one that
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  Speaker 1: the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated
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  Speaker 1: when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form
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  Speaker 1: will be admitted at once by those who love the
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  Speaker 1: lyre for its own sake and for its spiritual uses.
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  Speaker 1: But there is one pleasure still within the reach of
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  Speaker 1: fall immortality, and perhaps only one, which owes even more
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  Speaker 1: than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I
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  Speaker 1: mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery.
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  Speaker 1: In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory
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  Speaker 1: of God upon earth must, in solitude behold that glory
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  Speaker 1: to me at least. The presence not of human life only,
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  Speaker 1: but of life in any other form than that of
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  Speaker 1: the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless,
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  Speaker 1: is a stain upon the landscape, is at war with
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  Speaker 1: the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard
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  Speaker 1: the dark valleys and the gray rocks, and the waters
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  Speaker 1: that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers,
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  Speaker 1: and the proud, watchful mountains that look down upon all eye.
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  Speaker 1: Love to regard these as themselves, but the colossal members
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  Speaker 1: of one vast, animate and sensient whole, a whole whose
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  Speaker 1: form that of the sphere, is the most perfect and
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  Speaker 1: most inclusive of all, whose path is among associate planets,
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  Speaker 1: whose meek handmaiden is the Moon, whose mediate sovereign is
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  Speaker 1: the Sun, whose life is eternity, whose thought is that
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  Speaker 1: of a God, whose enjoyment is knowledge, whose destinies are
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  Speaker 1: lost in immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with
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  Speaker 1: our own cognizance of the animalculi which infest the brain,
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  Speaker 1: a being which we, in consequence regard as purely inanimate
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  Speaker 1: and material, much in the same manner as these animalculi
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  Speaker 1: must thus regard us. Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations
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  Speaker 1: assure us on every hand, notwithstanding the cant of the
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  Speaker 1: more ignorant of the priesthood, that space and therefore that bulk,
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  Speaker 1: is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty.
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  Speaker 1: The cycles in which the stars move are those best
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  Speaker 1: adapted for the evolution without collision of the greatest possible
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  Speaker 1: number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately
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  Speaker 1: such as within a given surface, to include the greatest
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  Speaker 1: possible amount of matter, while the surfaces themselves are so
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  Speaker 1: disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be
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  Speaker 1: accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it
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  Speaker 1: any argument against bulk being an object with God that
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  Speaker 1: space itself is infinite, for there may be an infinity
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  Speaker 1: of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly
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  Speaker 1: that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: as far as our judgments extend the leading principle in
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  Speaker 1: the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical to imagine
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  Speaker 1: it confined to the regions of the minute, where we
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  Speaker 1: daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august,
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  Speaker 1: as we find cycle within cycle without end, yet all
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  Speaker 1: revolving around one far distant center, which is the god Head.
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  Speaker 1: May we not analogically suppose in the same manner life
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  Speaker 1: within life, the less within the greater, and all within
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  Speaker 1: the Spirit Divine. In short, we are madly erring through
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  Speaker 1: self esteem in believing man, in either his temporal or
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  Speaker 1: future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe
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  Speaker 1: than that vast clod of the valley which he tills
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  Speaker 1: and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for
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  Speaker 1: no more profound reason than that he does not behold
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  Speaker 1: it in operation asterisk too, these fancies and such as
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  Speaker 1: these have always given to my meditations among the mountains
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  Speaker 1: and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a
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  Speaker 1: tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to
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  Speaker 1: term fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many,
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  Speaker 1: and far searching, and often solitary. And the interest with
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  Speaker 1: which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley,
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  Speaker 1: or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake,
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  Speaker 1: has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that
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  Speaker 1: I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was
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  Speaker 1: it who said, an allusion to the well known work
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  Speaker 1: of Zimmermann, that while solitude s dun belchose mays I
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  Speaker 1: l fox quelco and pour vou dire calip solitude st
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  Speaker 1: on Bell chose the epigram cannot be gainsaved, but the
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  Speaker 1: necessity is a thing that does not exist. It was
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  Speaker 1: during one of my lonely journeyings amid a far distant
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  Speaker 1: region of mountain, locked within mountain and sad rivers and
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  Speaker 1: melancholy tarn riding or sleeping within all, that I chanced
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  Speaker 1: upon a certain rivulet in island. I came upon them
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  Speaker 1: suddenly in the leafy june, and threw myself upon the
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  Speaker 1: turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that
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  Speaker 1: I might doze. As I contemplated the scene, I felt
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  Speaker 1: that thus only should I look upon it. Such was
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  Speaker 1: the character of phantasm, which it wore on all sides,
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  Speaker 1: save to the west, where the sun was about sinking,
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  Speaker 1: arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river,
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  Speaker 1: which turned sharply in its course and was thus immediately
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  Speaker 1: lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison,
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  Speaker 1: but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of
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  Speaker 1: the trees to the east, While in the opposite quarter,
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  Speaker 1: so it appeared to me as I lay at length
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  Speaker 1: and glanced upwards, there poured down, noiselessly and continuously into
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  Speaker 1: the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the
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  Speaker 1: sunset fountains of the sky. About midway in the short
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  Speaker 1: vista which my dreamy vision took in one small circular island,
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  Speaker 1: profusely verdured reposed upon the bosom of the stream, so
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  Speaker 1: blended bank and shadow there that each seemed pendulous in air.
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  Speaker 1: So mirrorlike was the glassy water that it was scarcely
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  Speaker 1: possible to say at what point upon the slope of
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  Speaker 1: the Emerald Turfet's crystal dominion began. My position enabled me
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  Speaker 1: to include in a single view both the eastern and
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  Speaker 1: western extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly
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  Speaker 1: marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one
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  Speaker 1: radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath
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  Speaker 1: the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers.
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  Speaker 1: The grass was short, springy, sweet scented, and asphodel interspersed.
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  Speaker 1: The trees were lithe mirthful, erect, bright, slender and graceful
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  Speaker 1: of eastern figure, and foliage, with bark, smooth, glossy, and
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  Speaker 1: parti colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and
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  Speaker 1: joy about all. And although no airs blew from out
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  Speaker 1: the heavens, yet everything had motioned through the gentle sweepings
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  Speaker 1: to and fro of innumerable butterflies that might have been
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  Speaker 1: mistaken for tulips with wings. Asterisk four. The other or
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  Speaker 1: eastern end of the aisle was whelmed in the blackest shade,
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  Speaker 1: a somber yet beautiful and peaceful gloom. Here pervaded all things.
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  Speaker 1: The trees were dark in color and mournful in form
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  Speaker 1: and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes
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  Speaker 1: that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The
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  Speaker 1: grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the
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  Speaker 1: heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither.
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  Speaker 1: Among it were many small, unsightly hillocks, low and narrow
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  Speaker 1: and not very long, that had the aspect of graves,
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  Speaker 1: but were not, although over and all about them the
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  Speaker 1: roue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees,
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  Speaker 1: fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself
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  Speaker 1: therein impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I
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  Speaker 1: fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower,
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  Speaker 1: separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth,
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  Speaker 1: and thus became absorbed by the stream, while other shadows
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  Speaker 1: issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors.
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  Speaker 1: Thus entombed. This idea, having once seized upon my fancy,
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  Speaker 1: greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie.
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  Speaker 1: If ever island were enchanted, said I to myself, This
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  Speaker 1: is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle
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  Speaker 1: fays who remained from the wreck of the race. Are
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  Speaker 1: these green tombs theirs? Or do they yield up their
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  Speaker 1: sweet lives as mankind yield up their own in dying?
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  Speaker 1: Do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God
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  Speaker 1: little by little their existence, as these trees render up
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  Speaker 1: shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution. What the
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  Speaker 1: wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade,
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  Speaker 1: growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not
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  Speaker 1: the life of the fae be to the death which
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  Speaker 1: engulfs it? As I thus mused with half shut eyes,
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  Speaker 1: while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents
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  Speaker 1: careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom
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  Speaker 1: large dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore, flakes, which,
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  Speaker 1: in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination
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  Speaker 1: might have converted into anything it pleased. While I thus mused,
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  Speaker 1: it appeared to me that the form of one of
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  Speaker 1: those very phase about whom I had been pondering made
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  Speaker 1: its way slowly into the darkness from out the light.
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  Speaker 1: At the western end of the island, she stood erect
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  Speaker 1: in a singularly fragile canoe and urged it with the
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  Speaker 1: mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of
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  Speaker 1: the lingering sunbeams. Her attitude seemed indicative of joy, but
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  Speaker 1: sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly
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  Speaker 1: she glided along and at length rounded the islet and
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  Speaker 1: re entered the region of light. The revolution which has
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  Speaker 1: just been made by the fay, continued I musingly, is
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  Speaker 1: the cycle of the brief year of her life. She
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  Speaker 1: has floated through her winter and through her summer. She
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  Speaker 1: is a year nearer unto death. For I did not
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  Speaker 1: fail to see that as she came into the shade,
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  Speaker 1: her shadow fell from her and was swallowed up in
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  Speaker 1: the dark water, making its blackness more black. And again
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  Speaker 1: the boat appeared in the fay. But about the attitude
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  Speaker 1: of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty,
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  Speaker 1: and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out
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  Speaker 1: the light and into the gloom, which deepened momently, and
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  Speaker 1: again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water
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  Speaker 1: and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again
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  Speaker 1: she made the circuit of the island while the sun
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  Speaker 1: rushed down to his slumbers, And at each issuing into
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  Speaker 1: the light, there was more sorrow about her person, while
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  Speaker 1: it grew feebler and far fainter, and more indistinct. And
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  Speaker 1: at each passage into the gloom, there fell from her
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  Speaker 1: a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black.
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  Speaker 1: But at length, when the sun had utterly departed the fay,
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  Speaker 1: now the mere ghost of her former self went disconsolately
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  Speaker 1: with her boat into the region of the ebony flood.
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  Speaker 1: And that she issued thence at all I cannot say,
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  Speaker 1: for darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her
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  Speaker 1: magical figure no more