[Illustration]
Black, chill, and still,--so black, so still, that I touch myself to
find out whether I have yet a body. Then I grope about me to make sure
that I am not under the earth,--buried forever beyond the reach of
light and sound. .. . A clock strikes three! I shall see the sun again!
Once again, at least. Possibly several thousand times. But there will
come a night never to be broken by any dawn,--a stillness never to be
broken by any sound.
This is certain. As certain as the fact that I exist.
Nothing else is equally certain. Reason deludes; feeling deludes; all
the senses delude. But there is no delusion whatever in the certain
knowledge of that night to come.
Doubt the reality of substance, the reality of ghosts, the faiths
of men, the gods;--doubt right and wrong, friendship and love, the
existence of beauty, the existence of horror;--there will always remain
one thing impossible to doubt,--one infinite blind black certainty.
The same darkness for all,--for the eyes of creatures and the eyes
of heaven;--the same doom for all,--insect and man, ant-hill and
city, races and worlds, suns and galaxies: inevitable dissolution,
disparition, and oblivion.
And vain all human striving not to remember, not to think: the
Veil that old faiths wove, to hide the Void, has been rent forever
away;--and Sheol is naked before us,--and destruction hath no covering.
So surely as I believe that I exist, even so surely must I believe that
I shall cease to exist--which is horror!... But--
Must I believe that I really exist?... In the moment of that
self-questioning, the Darkness stood about me as a wall, and spake:--
"I am only the Shadow: I shall pass. But the Reality will come, and
will not pass.
"I am only the Shadow. In me there are lights,--the glimmering of a
hundred millions of suns. And in me there are voices. With the coming
of the Reality, there will be no more lights, nor any voice, nor any
rising, nor any hope.
"But far above you there will still be sun for many a million
years,--and warmth and youth and love and joy.. .. Vast azure of
sky and sea,--fragrance of summer bloom,--shrillings in grass and
grove,--flutter of shadows and flicker of light,--laughter of waters
and laughter of girls. Blackness and silence for you,--and cold blind
creepings."