We may wonder why the underground dungeon is so large, why the
ceiling is thirty feet high, why a pendulum appears from an opening in that
ceiling. But we know when the dim light, purposely admitted from above,
discloses the prisoner strapped immovably on his back, and reveals the
giant pendulum, edged with the sharpest steel, slowly descending, its arc
of vibration increasing as the terrible edge almost imperceptibly
approaches the prisoner. We find ourselves bound with him, suffering from
the slow torture. We would escape into the upper air if we could, but Poe's
hypnotic power holds us as helpless as a child while that terrible edge
descends.
A comparison of these stories and the most successful ones published since
Poe's time, on the one hand, with those written by Irving or Hawthorne, on
the other, will show the influence of Poe's technique in making almost a
new creation of the modern short story.
[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE POE WROTE "THE RAVEN"
(Near Eighty-fourth Street, New York)]
POETRY.--Poe wrote a comparatively small amount of verse. Of the
forty-eight poems which he is known to have written, not more than nine are
masterpieces, and all of these are short.
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