IN UNCONSCIOUSNESS.


There was a big booming in my ears, great heavy iron bells that swung
to-and-fro on either side, and sent out deafening reverberations that
steeped the senses in a musical melody of sonorous sound; to-and-fro,
backward and forward, yet ever receding in a gradually widening circle,
monotonous, mournful, weird, suffusing the soul with an unutterable
sadness, as images of wailing processions, of weeping, empty-armed
women, and widowed maidens flashed through the mind, and settled on the
soul with a crushing, o'er-pressing weight of sorrow.

* * * * *

Now I lay floating, arms outstretched, on an illimitable waste of calm
tranquil waters. Far away as eye could reach, there was naught but the
pale, white-flecked, green waters of this ocean of eternity, and above
the tender blue sky arched down in perfect love of its mistress,
the ocean. Sky and sea, sea and sky, blue, calm, infinite, perfect sea,
heaving its womanly bosom to the passionate kisses of its ardent
sun-lover. Away into infinity stretched this perfectibility of love;
into eternity, I was drifting, alone, silent, yet burdened still with
the remembrance of the sadness of the bells.

Far away, they tolled out the incessant dirge, grown resignedly sweet
now; so intense in its infinite peace, that a calm of love, beyond all
human understanding and above all earthly passions, sank deep into my
soul, and so permeated my whole being with rest and peace, that my lips