Had I wandered into a region where both the material and psychical relations of our world had ceased to hold?
Might a man at any moment step beyond the realm of order, and become the sport of the lawless?
Yet I saw the raven, felt the ground under my feet, and heard a sound as of wind in the lowly plants around me! "How DID I get here ?" I said--apparently aloud, for the question was immediately answered.
"You came through the door," replied an odd, rather harsh voice.
I looked behind, then all about me, but saw no human shape.

The terror that madness might be at hand laid hold upon me: must I henceforth place no confidence either in my senses or my consciousness?
The same instant I knew it was the raven that had spoken, for he stood looking up at me with an air of waiting.

The sun was not shining, yet the bird seemed to cast a shadow, and the shadow seemed part of himself.
I beg my reader to aid me in the endeavour to make myself intelligible--if here understanding be indeed possible between us.

I was in a world, or call it a state of things, an economy of conditions, an idea of existence, so little correspondent with the ways and modes of this world--which we are apt to think the only world, that the best choice I can make of word or phrase is but an adumbration of what I would convey.

I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind.