Thought I was down in the ocean--right on the bottom. Whew! what a
place it was!--saw all sorts of things, living and dead--all colors,
good and bad--all shapes, hateful and fascinating. Here I wandered
through endless groves of coral. Aloft went the light shafts tapering
away into the blue distance, then branching forth into a glorious
canopy, through which came the broken light with a mellowed beauty,
not unlike the sun’s beams through a polished fresco-worken slab
of alabaster. The waves swung backwards and forwards through this
submarine forest, and their rush made the tall shafts quiver like
aspen boughs in the tempest wind; and the light coral twigs, here and
there detached by the waters, fell thick and fast like star showers
in wintry nights. Nor should I forget the sounds of those waters as
they tossed up the shells which were scattered there, and witched from
them a music, that tripped and tilted through the brain, like Mab
and her melodies in moonlight vision. It changed! I was in a desert!
Rocks and barren surfaces above, beneath, around me! Wild cliffs--rent
fastnesses--deep chasms--yawning and gaping like the cleft jaws of
Hell! They had wrecks, and ruins, and dead men, and skeletons, and
skulls in them. Here were fragments of those mighty tenements, that
once rode in triumph on the wave’s surface. There were those black
engines, wont to belch forth “their devilish glut,” and flame, and
thunder. Here were skeletons--some hugging in mortal conflict. They
were grappled together, as when death overtook them--their jaws yet
apart, as the last curse dwelt on them, the moment the bolt came.
There were friends too, parent and child, husband and wife, lover and
maiden--laid as they died, locked heart to heart, each on the other’s
breast, the two a unity. I sickened, shuddered, gasped--