"What is sensation?"
And I could not answer, and the Gloom took weight, and pressed upon me,
and said:--
"You do not know what is sensation? How, then, can you say whether
there will or will not be pain for the dust of you,--the molecules of
your body, the atoms of your soul?... Atoms--what are they?"
Again I could make no answer, and the weight of the Gloom waxed
greater--a weight of pyramids--and the whisper hissed:--
"Their repulsions? their attractions? The awful clingings of them
and the leapings?... What are these?... Passions of lives burnt
out?--furies of insatiable desire?--frenzies of everlasting hate?
--madnesses of never ending torment?... You do not know? But you say
that there will be no more pain!..."
Then I cried out to the mocker:--"I am awake--awake--fully awake!
I have ceased to fear;--I remember!... All that I am is all that I
have been. Before the beginnings of Time I was;--beyond the uttermost
circling of the Eternities I shall endure. In myriad million forms I
but seem to pass: as form I am only Wave; as essence I am Sea. Sea
without shore I am;--and Doubt and Fear and Pain are but duskings
that fleet on the face of my depth.. .. Asleep, I behold the illusions
of Time; but, waking, I know myself timeless: one with the Life that
has neither form yet also one begins and the grave and graves,--the
the eater of neither form nor name, yet also one with all that begins
and ends,--even the grave and the maker of graves,--the corpse and the
eater of corpses...."
*
A sparrow twittered from the roof; another responded. Shapes of things
began to define in a soft gray glimmering;--and the gloom slowly
lightened. Murmurs of the city's wakening came to my ears, and grew and
multiplied. And the dimness flushed.
Then rose the beautiful and holy Sun, the mighty Quickener, the mighty
Putrefier,--symbol sublime of that infinite Life whose forces are also
mine!...