Select the correct answer.
What word best describes the tone of this excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe?
I looked upon the scene before me-upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-upon the bleak wä
the vacant eye-like windows-upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with an utter depression
which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium-the bitter lapse i
everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was
an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-an unredeemed drea
thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into
aught of the sublime. What was it-I paused to think-what was
unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
crowded upon me as pondered. I was forced to
nor could Igrapple with the
shadowy fan
fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there
combinations of very simple natural objects which have
are
the power of thus affecting us, still
the analysis of this power lies among
considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of
details of the picture, would
be sufficient to modify, or perhaps
idea, I reined my horse to the
to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upor
precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay
with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray in unruffled lustre and the vacant and by the dwelling, and gazed dowr
eye-like windows.
sedge, and the ghastly tree-
O A. admiration
O B. terror
O C. hope
© D.
discovery
O E. loss