Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge the old age of the

  world drew on. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily

  although unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth's

  records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest

  civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison

  of China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with

  Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the

  turbulent mother of all Arts. In history {*2} of these regions I met

  with a ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the

  three latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their

  individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the

  infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save in

  death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he

  must be "born again."

  And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits,

  daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the

  days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having

  undergone that purification {*3} which alone could efface its

  rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and

  the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be

  rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man: - for man the Death

  purged - for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be

  poison in knowledge no more - for the redeemed, regenerated,

  blissful, and now immortal, but still for the material, man.

  _Una._ Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but

  the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we

  believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in

  believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened,

  and passed into the grave; and thither your constant Una speedily

  followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and

  whose conclusion brings us thus together once more, tortured our

  slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my Monos, it

  was a century still.

  _Monos._ Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity.

  Unquestionably, it was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at

  heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil

  and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of

  pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the

  manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but was

  impotent to undeceive you - after some days there came upon me, as

  you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was

  termed Death by those who stood around me.

  Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of

  sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme

  quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying

  motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal

  slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his

  sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances.

  I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased

  to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses

  were unusually active, although eccentrically so - assuming often

  each other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were

  inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and

  intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my

  lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowers -

  fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but

  whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The eyelids,

  transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision.

  As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their

  sockets but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere

  were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon

  the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more

  vivid effect than those which struck the front or interior surface.

  Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I

  appreciated it only as sound - sound sweet or discordant as the

  matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shade

  - curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time,

  although excited in degree, was not irregular in action - estimating

  real sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of

  sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its

  impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and

  resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure

  of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognised

  through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole

  being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual

  delight. All my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials

  furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least

  degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain

  there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain

  or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with

  all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every

  variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more;

  they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows

  which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell

  upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled

  every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the

  Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers -

  you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

  They attired me for the coffin - three or four dark figures which

  flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my

  vision they affected me as forms; but upon passing to my side their

  images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other

  dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited

  in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about me.

  The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed

  by a vague uneasiness - an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad

  real sounds fall continuously within his ear - low distant

  bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and mingling with

  melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy

  discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull

  weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike

  the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous, which,

  beginning with the first twilight, had grown in strength with the

  darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the room, and this

  reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal

  bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The

  ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing

  from the flame of eac
h lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed

  unbrokenly into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,

  dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat

  gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing

  them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and

  mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances had

  called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself - a feeling that,

  half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow;

  but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed

  indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away, first

  into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure as

  before.

  And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there

  appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its

  exercise I found a wild delight - yet a delight still physical,

  inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal

  frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no

  artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain,

  that of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence

  even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental pendulous

  pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of

  Time. By the absolute equalization of this movement - or of such as

  this - had the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves, been

  adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon

  the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came

  sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from the true

  proportion - and these deviations were omni-prævalent - affected me

  just as violations of abstract truth were wont, on earth, to affect

  the moral sense. Although no two of the time-pieces in the chamber

  struck the individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no

  difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective

  momentary errors of each. And this - this keen, perfect,

  self-existing sentiment of duration - this sentiment existing (as man

  could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any

  succession of events - this idea - this sixth sense, upspringing from

  the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the

  intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.

  It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had

  departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the

  coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the

  tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly these strains

  diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The

  perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer.

  The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull

  shock like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by

  total loss of the idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense

  was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one

  abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body had been at length

  stricken with the hand of the deadly Decay.

  Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and

  the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic

  intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the

  flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence

  of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you

  sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was

  not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side,

  which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the

  hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which

  heaped heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in

  blackness and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the

  worm.

  And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose,

  there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched

  narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of

  its flight - without effort and without object.

  A year passed. The consciousness of being had grown hourly more

  indistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure, usurped

  its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of

  place. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the

  body, was now growing to be the body itself. At length, as often

  happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is Death imaged)

  - at length, as sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer,

  when some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him

  half enveloped in dreams - so to me, in the strict embrace of the

  Shadow came that light which alone might have had power to startle -

  the light of enduring Love. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay

  darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there

  descended the coffin of Una.

  And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been

  extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence.

  Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had

  food no more. The sense of being had at length utterly departed, and

  there reigned in its stead - instead of all things - dominant and

  perpetual - the autocrats Place and Time. For that which was not -

  for that which had no form - for that which had no thought - for that

  which had no sentience - for that which was soulless, yet of which

  matter formed no portion - for all this nothingness, yet for all this

  immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours,

  co-mates.

  ~~~ End of Text ~~~

  ======

  THE

  CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION

  ALD F@J BD@F@JFT

  I will bring fire to thee.

  _Euripides - Androm:_

  EIROS.

  WHY do you call me Eiros?

  CHARMION

  So henceforward will you always be called. You must forget too,

  my earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.

  EIROS.

  This is indeed no dream!

  CHARMION.