In The Shadow Of The Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people-ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:-
And their king it is who tolls:-
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells-
Of the bells:-
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells:-
To the tolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells .

Poe in G Minor BY JEFFERY DEAVER

The year is 1971. I’m sitting on a stool on a low stage, two spotlights shining in my face. I clutch my dreadnought-size guitar. (Think Bob Dylan’s Gibson Hummingbird on the cover of Nashville Skyline, but without the hummingbird.)

The venue is called the Chez, which I’ve recently learned means “The house of…” in French. (Not usually talented at languages, I pay attention in that particular class because I have a breathless crush on my professor, a cross between Linda Ronstadt and Claudine Longet, who, yes, shot that skier, but I don’t care.)

The Chez is a coffeehouse in Columbia, Missouri, where I’m a junior in the university’s Journalism School. I come here to perform folk songs in the evenings once or twice a week. The admission is free, the frothy pre- Starbucks concoctions are cheap, and owing to its location in a church, the place is alcohol-free. All of which means the audiences are sober, attentive, and-fortunately for me-forgiving.

Though I’m at school to become the next Walter Cronkite, singing and songwriting are my passions, and if I’d been able to make a living on the stage I’d have signed up in an instant-no insurance plan or 401(k) needed-even if the devil himself was the head of the record label’s A &R department.

This Friday night I begin fingerpicking a melody that’s not of my composition. It was written by Phil Ochs, a young singer-songwriter central to the folk music scene of the sixties and early seventies. He wrote a number of songs that embodied the psyche of that era, like “Draft Dodger Rag” and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” but the song that I’m performing this Friday is not social or political. It’s a lyrical ballad-one that I love and with which I often