And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table.

I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. They appeared to me white - whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words, - and thin even to grotesqueness thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness - of immoveable resolution - of stern contempt of human torture. Yet, for a while, I saw but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. This only for a brief period for presently I heard no more. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution, - perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. The sentence - the dread sentence of death - was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. I was sick - sick unto death with that long agony and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

Poe the pendulum