Unless it trembled with the strings.
There is a terrible sincerity in Poe’s sense of the presence of death. His vision of mortal men, at least, was not theatrical in its gloom:
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!