The Masquerade of the Red Death
Message found in a Bottle
The Premature Burial
The Raven
The Sphinx
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Cask of Sherry
The Complete Collection of Poems
The Speech of Eiros and Charmion
The Fall of the Home of Usher

The Masquerade of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe

The "Red Death" had long blasted the country. No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal
--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and
sudden dizziness, and then exuberant haemorrhage at the pores, with
dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon
the face of the victim, were the blighter ban which shut him out from
the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-