The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame;
and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of
utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a
struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering
earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--
I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to
certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses
of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered
The Fall of the House of Usher |