Then silence, and stillness, night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness
was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or
even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber --no!
In delirium --no! In a swoon --no! In death --no! even in the grave
all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from
the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some
dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we
remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the
swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or
spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It
seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could
recall the impressions of the first, we should find these
impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf
is --what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of
the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first
stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they
not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has
never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar
faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air
the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over
the perfume of some novel flower --is not he whose brain grows
bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never
before arrested his attention.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25