Still the night stayed; the black mass of forest that swept up the
hill-side stood in mystical gloom, in silence that could be felt; when
at once,--not suddenly,--as if the night could forbear no more, but
must utter some chord with the culmination of midnight horrors, a bird
uttered one sharp cry, desolate utterly, hopeless, concentred, as if a
keen blade parted its heart and the outraged life within remonstrated
and despaired,--despaired not of life, for still the note repeated its
monotone, but of death, of period to its pangs. That cry entered into my
brain; it was unjust of Nature so to taunt me, so to express where I was
speechless; yet I could not shut it out. A pitiful chill of flesh and
sense seized me; I was cold,--oh, how cold!--the fevered veins crept now
in sluggish ice; sharp thrills of shivering rigor racked me from head
to foot; pain had dulled its own capacity; wrapped in every covering my
room afforded, with blunted perceptions, and a dreadful consciousness of
lost vitality, which, even when I longed to die, appalled me with the
touch of death's likeness, I sunk on the floor,--and it was morning!
Morning! "a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of
thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains!" A pale sun
lit the earth, but earth and sky were black,--no sun touched me in heart
or eye; I saw nothing, felt nothing, but heavy and impenetrable gloom.
Yet again the ceremonies of life prevailed, and my real life slept
undiscovered.
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