I

    In the greenest of our valleys,
      By good angels tenanted
    Once a fair and stately palace—­
      Radiant palace—­reared its head. 
    In the monarch Thought’s dominion—­
      It stood there! 
    Never seraph spread a pinion
      Over fabric half so fair.

    II

    Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
      On its roof did float and flow;
    (This—­all this—­was in the olden
      Time long ago)
    And every gentle air that dallied,
      In that sweet day,
    Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
      A winged odour went away.

    III

    Wanderers in that happy valley
      Through two luminous windows saw
    Spirits moving musically
      To a lute’s well tuned law,
    Round about a throne, where sitting
      (Porphyrogene!)
    In state his glory well befitting,
      The ruler of the realm was seen.

    IV

    And all with pearl and ruby glowing
      Was the fair palace door,
    Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
      And sparkling evermore,
    A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
      Was but to sing,
    In voices of surpassing beauty,
      The wit and wisdom of their king.

    V

    But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
      Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
    (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
      Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
    And, round about his home, the glory
      That blushed and bloomed
    Is but a dim-remembered story
      Of the old time entombed.

    VI

    And travellers now within that valley,
      Through the red-litten windows, see
    Vast forms that move fantastically
      To a discordant melody;
    While, like a rapid ghastly river,
      Through the pale door,
    A hideous throng rush out forever,
      And laugh—­but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher’s which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men[1] have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it.  This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things.  But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganisation.  I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion.  The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers.  The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones—­in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and