The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with
a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that
Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the
dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently
distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or
grating sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already
conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the
The Fall of the House of Usher |