One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.

In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend

Lord help my poor soul.

I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.