Now comes the begging.
My assignment 2 has to do with
social tagging. If you could take some time to read/skim this very short public
domain story by Edgar Allan Poe and add three tags separated by
commas or semi-colons that you think are most appropriate in the comments
section, it would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Luke
The Masque of the Red Death by
Edgar Allan Poe www.world-english.org
The red death had long devastated
the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its
Avatar and its seal--the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp
pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with
dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of
the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the
sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of
the disease, were incidents of half an hour.
But Prince Prospero was happy and
dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned
to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of
one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure,
the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty
wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered,
brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
They resolved to leave means
neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy
from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the
courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care
of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had
provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were
improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty,
there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red
Death."
It was toward the close of the
fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his
thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that
masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were
seven--an imperial suite, In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and
straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on
either hand, so that the view of the whole extant is scarcely impeded. Here the
case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of
the "bizarre." The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision
embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at the
right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window
looked out upon a closed corridor of which pursued the windings of the suite.
These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the
prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at
the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue--and vividly blue were its
windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and
here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the
casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth with
white--the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black
velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in
heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber
only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The
panes were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in no one of any of the seven
apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden
ornaments that lay scattered to and fro and depended from the roof. There was
no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of
chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite
each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays
through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room. And thus were produced
a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or back
chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings
through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild
a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the
company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was within this
apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of
ebony. It pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and
when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be
stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear
and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and
emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were
constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the
sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a
brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and while the chimes of the clock
yet rang. it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and
sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or
meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once
pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at
their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,
that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion;
and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the
clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as
before. But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The
tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for color and effects. He
disregarded the "decora" of mere fashion. His plans were bold and
fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who
would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was
necessary to hear and see and touch him to be _sure_ he was not.
He had directed, in great part,
the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great
fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter
and piquancy and phantasm--much of what has been seen in "Hernani."
There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were
delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the
beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible,
and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the
seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the
dreams--writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild
music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there
strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a
moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams
are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away--they have
endured but an instant--and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as
they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and
fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through
which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most
westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the
night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored
panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot
falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled
peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches _their_ ears who indulge in
the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were
densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel
went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight
upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions
of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things
as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the
clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept, with more of
time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus
too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly
sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found
leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence
having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole
company a buzz, or murmur, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such
as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could
have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was
nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone
beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in
the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even
with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are
matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now
deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor
propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to
foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was
made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the
closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this
might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the
mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was
dabbled in _blood_--and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was
besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero
fell on this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more
fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen
to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or
distaste; but in the next, his brow reddened with rage.
"Who dares"--he demanded
hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him--"who dares insult us with
this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him--that we may know whom we
have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!"
It was in the eastern or blue
chamber in which stood Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang
throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and
robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where
stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he
spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of
the intruder, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate
and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain
nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the
whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that,
unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and while the vast
assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the
walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured
step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to
the purple--to the purple to the green--through the green to the
orange--through this again to the white--and even thence to the violet, ere a
decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince
Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice,
rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account
of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and
had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the
retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet
apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp
cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most
instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then
summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw
themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood
erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in
unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which
they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the
presence of the red death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by
one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died
each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock
went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods
expired. And darkness and decay and the red death held illimitable dominion
over all.
wwww.world-english.org
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