Select the correct answer. What word best describes the tone of this excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe?
I looked upon the scene before me-upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-upon the bleak walls-
upon the vacant eye-like windows- upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with an utter depression of
soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium-the bitter lapse into
everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the /eil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-an unredeemed dreariness
of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it-I paused to think-what was it that
so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could grapple with the shadowy fancies
that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would OE sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this
idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down-but
with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems,
and the vacant and eye-like windows.