i grew aware of existence, aware also of the profound, the infinite cold. i was intensely blessed—more blessed, i know, than my heart, imagining, can now recall. i could not think of warmth with the least suggestion of pleasure. i knew that i had enjoyed it, but could not remember how. the cold had soothed every care, dissolved every pain, comforted every sorrow. comforted? nay; sorrow was swallowed up in the life drawing nigh to restore every good and lovely thing a hundredfold! i lay at peace, full of the quietest expectation, breathing the damp odours of earth’s bountiful bosom, aware of the souls of primroses, daisies and snowdrops, patiently waiting in it for the spring.
how convey the delight of that frozen, yet conscious sleep! i had no more to stand up! had only to lie stretched out and still! how cold i was, words cannot tell; yet i grew colder and colder—and welcomed the cold yet more and more. i grew continuously less conscious of myself, continuously more conscious of bliss, unimaginable yet felt. i had neither made it nor prayed for it: it was mine in virtue of existence! and existence was mine in virtue of a will that dwelt in mine.
then the dreams began to arrive—and came crowding.—i lay naked on a snowy peak. the white mist heaved below me like a billowy sea. the cold moon was in the air with me, and above the moon and me the colder sky, in which the moon and i dwelt. i was adam, waiting for god to breathe into my nostrils the breath of life.—i was not adam, but a child in the bosom of a mother white with a radiant whiteness. i was a youth on a white horse, leaping from cloud to cloud of a blue heaven, hasting calmly to some blessed goal. for centuries i dreamed—or was it chiliads? or only one long night?—but why ask? for time had nothing to do with me; i was in the land of thought—farther in, higher up than the seven dimensions, the ten senses: i think i was where i am—in the heart of god.—i dreamed away dim cycles in the centre of a melting glacier, the spectral moon drawing nearer and nearer, the wind and the welter of a torrent growing in my ears. i lay and heard them: the wind and the water and the moon sang a peaceful waiting for a redemption drawing nigh. i dreamed cycles, i say, but, for aught i knew or can tell, they were the solemn, æonian march of a second, pregnant with eternity.
then, of a sudden, but not once troubling my conscious bliss, all the wrongs i had ever done, from far beyond my earthly memory down to the present moment, were with me. fully in every wrong lived the conscious i, confessing, abjuring, lamenting the dead, making atonement with each person i had injured, hurt, or offended. every human soul to which i had caused a troubled thought, was now grown unspeakably dear to me, and i humbled myself before it, agonising to cast from between us the clinging offence. i wept at the feet of the mother whose commands i had slighted; with bitter shame i confessed to my father that i had told him two lies, and long forgotten them: now for long had remembered them, and kept them in memory to crush at last at his feet. i was the eager slave of all whom i had thus or anyhow wronged. countless services i devised to render them! for this one i would build such a house as had never grown from the ground! for that one i would train such horses as had never yet been seen in any world! for a third i would make such a garden as had never bloomed, haunted with still pools, and alive with running waters! i would write songs to make their hearts swell, and tales to make them glow! i would turn the forces of the world into such channels of invention as to make them laugh with the joy of wonder! love possessed me! love was my life! love was to me, as to him that made me, all in all!
suddenly i found myself in a solid blackness, upon which the ghost of light that dwells in the caverns of the eyes could not cast one fancied glimmer. but my heart, which feared nothing and hoped infinitely, was full of peace. i lay imagining what the light would be when it came, and what new creation it would bring with it—when, suddenly, without conscious volition, i sat up and stared about me.
the moon was looking in at the lowest, horizontal, crypt-like windows of the death-chamber, her long light slanting, i thought, across the fallen, but still ripening sheaves of the harvest of the great husbandman.—but no; that harvest was gone! gathered in, or swept away by chaotic storm, not a sacred sheaf was there! my dead were gone! i was alone!—in desolation dread lay depths yet deeper than i had hitherto known!—had there never been any ripening dead? had i but dreamed them and their loveliness? why then these walls? why the empty couches? no; they were all up! they were all abroad in the new eternal day, and had forgotten me! they had left me behind, and alone! tenfold more terrible was the tomb its inhabitants away! the quiet ones had made me quiet with their presence—had pervaded my mind with their blissful peace; now i had no friend, and my lovers were far from me! a moment i sat and stared horror-stricken. i had been alone with the moon on a mountain top in the sky; now i was alone with her in a huge cenotaph: she too was staring about, seeking her dead with ghastly gaze! i sprang to my feet, and staggered from the fearful place.
the cottage was empty. i ran out into the night.
no moon was there! even as i left the chamber, a cloudy rampart had risen and covered her. but a broad shimmer came from far over the heath, mingled with a ghostly murmuring music, as if the moon were raining a light that plashed as it fell. i ran stumbling across the moor, and found a lovely lake, margined with reeds and rushes: the moon behind the cloud was gazing upon the monsters’ den, full of clearest, brightest water, and very still.—but the musical murmur went on, filling the quiet air, and drawing me after it.
i walked round the border of the little mere, and climbed the range of hills. what a sight rose to my eyes! the whole expanse where, with hot, aching feet, i had crossed and recrossed the deep-scored channels and ravines of the dry river-bed, was alive with streams, with torrents, with still pools—“a river deep and wide”! how the moon flashed on the water! how the water answered the moon with flashes of its own—white flashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow! and a great jubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty. i stood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was not all a failure! i had helped to set this river free!—my dead were not lost! i had but to go after and find them! i would follow and follow until i came whither they had gone! our meeting might be thousands of years away, but at last—at last i should hold them! wherefore else did the floods clap their hands?
i hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun! in what direction to turn my steps i knew not, but i must go and go till i found my living dead! a torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range: i rushed in, it laid no hold upon me; i waded through it. the next i sprang across; the third i swam; the next i waded again.
i stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. every now and then some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of the dulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. at moments the world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me—not with the force of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, but with the greatness of the silence wandering into sound.
as i stood lost in delight, a hand was laid on my shoulder. i turned, and saw a man in the prime of strength, beautiful as if fresh from the heart of the glad creator, young like him who cannot grow old. i looked: it was adam. he stood large and grand, clothed in a white robe, with the moon in his hair.
“father,” i cried, “where is she? where are the dead? is the great resurrection come and gone? the terror of my loneliness was upon me; i could not sleep without my dead; i ran from the desolate chamber.—whither shall i go to find them?”
“you mistake, my son,” he answered, in a voice whose very breath was consolation. “you are still in the chamber of death, still upon your couch, asleep and dreaming, with the dead around you.”
“alas! when i but dream how am i to know it? the dream best dreamed is the likest to the waking truth!”
“when you are quite dead, you will dream no false dream. the soul that is true can generate nothing that is not true, neither can the false enter it.”
“but, sir,” i faltered, “how am i to distinguish betwixt the true and the false where both alike seem real?”
“do you not understand?” he returned, with a smile that might have slain all the sorrows of all his children. “you cannot perfectly distinguish between the true and the false while you are not yet quite dead; neither indeed will you when you are quite dead—that is, quite alive, for then the false will never present itself. at this moment, believe me, you are on your bed in the house of death.”
“i am trying hard to believe you, father. i do indeed believe you, although i can neither see nor feel the truth of what you say.”
“you are not to blame that you cannot. and because even in a dream you believe me, i will help you.—put forth your left hand open, and close it gently: it will clasp the hand of your lona, who lies asleep where you lie dreaming you are awake.”
i put forth my hand: it closed on the hand of lona, firm and soft and deathless.
“but, father,” i cried, “she is warm!”
“your hand is as warm to hers. cold is a thing unknown in our country. neither she nor you are yet in the fields of home, but each to each is alive and warm and healthful.”
then my heart was glad. but immediately supervened a sharp-stinging doubt.
“father,” i said, “forgive me, but how am i to know surely that this also is not a part of the lovely dream in which i am now walking with thyself?”
“thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth. some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! be content for a while not to know surely. the hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be for ever dead. scarce, then, wilt thou be able to recall the features of the phantom. thou wilt then know that which thou canst not now dream. thou hast not yet looked the truth in the face, hast as yet at best but seen him through a cloud. that which thou seest not, and never didst see save in a glass darkly—that which, indeed, never can be known save by its innate splendour shining straight into pure eyes—that thou canst not but doubt, and art blameless in doubting until thou seest it face to face, when thou wilt no longer be able to doubt it. but to him who has once seen even a shadow only of the truth, and, even but hoping he has seen it when it is present no longer, tries to obey it—to him the real vision, the truth himself, will come, and depart no more, but abide with him for ever.”
“i think i see, father,” i said; “i think i understand.”
“then remember, and recall. trials yet await thee, heavy, of a nature thou knowest not now. remember the things thou hast seen. truly thou knowest not those things, but thou knowest what they have seemed, what they have meant to thee! remember also the things thou shalt yet see. truth is all in all; and the truth of things lies, at once hid and revealed, in their seeming.”
“how can that be, father?” i said, and raised my eyes with the question; for i had been listening with downbent head, aware of nothing but the voice of adam.
he was gone; in my ears was nought but the sounding silence of the swift-flowing waters. i stretched forth my hands to find him, but no answering touch met their seeking. i was alone—alone in the land of dreams! to myself i seemed wide awake, but i believed i was in a dream, because he had told me so.
even in a dream, however, the dreamer must do something! he cannot sit down and refuse to stir until the dream grow weary of him and depart: i took up my wandering, and went on.
many channels i crossed, and came to a wider space of rock; there, dreaming i was weary, i laid myself down, and longed to be awake.
i was about to rise and resume my journey, when i discovered that i lay beside a pit in the rock, whose mouth was like that of a grave. it was deep and dark; i could see no bottom.
now in the dreams of my childhood i had found that a fall invariably woke me, and would, therefore, when desiring to discontinue a dream, seek some eminence whence to cast myself down that i might wake: with one glance at the peaceful heavens, and one at the rushing waters, i rolled myself over the edge of the pit.
for a moment consciousness left me. when it returned, i stood in the garret of my own house, in the little wooden chamber of the cowl and the mirror.
unspeakable despair, hopelessness blank and dreary, invaded me with the knowledge: between me and my lona lay an abyss impassable! stretched a distance no chain could measure! space and time and mode of being, as with walls of adamant unscalable, impenetrable, shut me in from that gulf! true, it might yet be in my power to pass again through the door of light, and journey back to the chamber of the dead; and if so, i was parted from that chamber only by a wide heath, and by the pale, starry night betwixt me and the sun, which alone could open for me the mirror-door, and was now far away on the other side of the world! but an immeasurably wider gulf sank between us in this—that she was asleep and i was awake! that i was no longer worthy to share with her that sleep, and could no longer hope to awake from it with her! for truly i was much to blame: i had fled from my dream! the dream was not of my making, any more than was my life: i ought to have seen it to the end! and in fleeing from it, i had left the holy sleep itself behind me!—i would go back to adam, tell him the truth, and bow to his decree!
i crept to my chamber, threw myself on my bed, and passed a dreamless night.
i rose, and listlessly sought the library. on the way i met no one; the house seemed dead. i sat down with a book to await the noontide: not a sentence could i understand! the mutilated manuscript offered itself from the masked door: the sight of it sickened me; what to me was the princess with her devilry!
i rose and looked out of a window. it was a brilliant morning. with a great rush the fountain shot high, and fell roaring back. the sun sat in its feathery top. not a bird sang, not a creature was to be seen. raven nor librarian came near me. the world was dead about me. i took another book, sat down again, and went on waiting.
noon was near. i went up the stairs to the dumb, shadowy roof. i closed behind me the door into the wooden chamber, and turned to open the door out of a dreary world.
i left the chamber with a heart of stone. do what i might, all was fruitless. i pulled the chains; adjusted and re-adjusted the hood; arranged and re-arranged the mirrors; no result followed. i waited and waited to give the vision time; it would not come; the mirror stood blank; nothing lay in its dim old depth but the mirror opposite and my haggard face.
i went back to the library. there the books were hateful to me—for i had once loved them.
that night i lay awake from down-lying to uprising, and the next day renewed my endeavours with the mystic door. but all was yet in vain. how the hours went i cannot think. no one came nigh me; not a sound from the house below entered my ears. not once did i feel weary—only desolate, drearily desolate.
i passed a second sleepless night. in the morning i went for the last time to the chamber in the roof, and for the last time sought an open door: there was none. my heart died within me. i had lost my lona!
was she anywhere? had she ever been, save in the mouldering cells of my brain? “i must die one day,” i thought, “and then, straight from my death-bed, i will set out to find her! if she is not, i will go to the father and say—‘even thou canst not help me: let me cease, i pray thee!’”
