The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe The shadow into which my valley had ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me in my desperately wounded condition to pass the night in the open air was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appenians, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Rackliff. To all appearances it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptrously furnished apartments. This lay in a remote turret of the building.

Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multi-former memorial trophies together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. Those paintings which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the shadow rendered necessary. In these paintings my insipid delirium perhaps had caused me to take deep interest so that I bade Petro to close the heavy shutters of the room since it was already night.

To light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself if not to sleep at least alternatively to the contemplation of these pictures and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow and which purported to criticise and describe them. Long, long I read and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came.

The position of the candelabrum displeased me and out reaching my hand with difficulty rather than disturbed my slumbering valley. I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book. The action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of numerous candles for there were many, now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bedposts.

I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting couragely and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not fit at first apparent even to my own perception.

But while my lids remained that shut, I ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. That was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought, to make sure that my vision had not deceived me, to calm and subdued my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze.

In a very few moments I again looked fixatively at the painting. That I now saw a right I could not and would not doubt. For the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stripper which was stealing over my senses and to start on me at once into waking life.

The portrait I have already said was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders done in what is technically termed a vignette manner. Much in the style of the favourite heads of Sully. The arms, the buzzing and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the background of the home.

The frame was oval, richly gilded and filigrid in merusque. As a thing of art nothing could be more ad brawls than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work nor the immortal beauty of the countenance which it so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber had mistaken the head for that of a living person.

I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design and the vignette of the frame must have instantly dispelled such idea, must have prevented even in its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon this point, I remained for an hour perhaps half sitting, half reclining with my vision riveted upon the portrait. That length satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeness of expression which at first startling finally confounded, subdued and appalled me with deep and reverent awe.

I replaced the candelabrum in its former position, the cause of my deep agitation being the shut from view. I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories, turning to the number which designated the oval portrait. I thereread for vague and quaint words which follow. She was a maiden of raerous beauty and not more lovely than full of glee and even was the hour when she saw and loved and wedded the painter.

He passionate, studious or stare and having already a bride in his art. She a maiden of raerous beauty and not more lovely than full of glee. All light and smiles and frolicsome as the young form, loving and cherishing all things, hating only the art which was her rival. Dreading only the palette and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.

It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret chamber where the light gripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was as passionate and wild and moody a man who became lost in reveries so that he would not see the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride who pined visibly to all but him.

But she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly because she saw the painter who had high and brown took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. Men's food, some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length as a labour-droner to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work and turned his eyes from canvas merely even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.

And when many weeks had passed and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye. The spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp and then the brush was given and the tint was placed and for one moment the painter stood in trance before the work which he had wrought but in the next while he gazed yet. He grew tremulous and very pallid and a gask and crying with a loud voice. This is indeed life itself.

He turned suddenly to regard his beloved for she was dead.