<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 12pt;
font-family:Calibri
}
--></style></head>
<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>I was struck by the term "faithless door" in the passage describing<div>Severian's mausoleum " . . . it was the smallness of the room, the</div><div>thick walls of masonry, and the single, narrow window with its one</div><div>bar, together with the faithless door (so massively heavy) that </div><div>remained eternally ajar." (*Shadow and Claw*, pg. 17).</div><div><br></div><div>I do not know, and still do not know, what a faithless door is but</div><div>while trying to find out, I came across this poem attributed to </div><div>William Gifford, called *Epitaph* (1852), which has interesting resonances</div><div>with Severian's story:</div><div><br></div><div><div>EPITAPH.</div><div>Where ragged nettles mark the rising ground,</div><div>And pois’nous night-shade breathes infection round,</div><div>Bill Brazen rots. In the good patriarch’s phrase,</div><div>“Evil and few were his unhallow’d days:”</div><div>Yet in these few and evil the rank knave</div><div>Choused of a head-stone his poor father’s grave;</div><div>Abused his mother; grudged his children bread,</div><div>And coffin’d them in wig boxes when dead;</div><div><br></div><div>Bullied his sister; kicked his wife to th’ door;</div><div>Belied the parish books, and starved the poor.</div><div>Till grown too bad for this bad town, kind Heaven</div><div>Suffer’d the miscreant westward to be driven;</div><div>Where three long years in solitary state</div><div>He dragg’d the drunken hours through scorn and hate;</div><div>Till as he lay one night devoid of rest,</div><div>And conscience woke the worm within his breast,</div><div>A wint’ry blast, with hoarse, tremendous roar,</div><div>Rush’d through the gallery, burst the faithless door,</div><div>Approach’d him, touch’d—“Christ Jesus! save,” he cried,</div><div>“A wretch! a hateful wretch!"—shook, groan’d, and died.</div><div>Now buried here, the scorn that dogg’d his way</div><div>Through life, still scents, and opens on his clay.</div><div>* * * * * *</div><div>Stranger! this scene demands an awful pause:</div><div>A vicious world takes arms in virtue’s cause:</div><div>Vice cowers beneath the shame she boasts to brave,</div><div>And finds chastisement on this side the grave.</div></div> </div></body>
</html>