“Born again?”

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.”
These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so
long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until
Death himself resolved for me the secret.

Death!

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step—a joyous inquietude in
your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by the majestic
novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And
here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to
bring terror to all hearts—throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How
often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature!
How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss—
saying unto it “thus far, and no farther!” That earnest mutual
love, my own Monos, which burned within our bosoms—how
vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first upspringing,
that our happiness would strengthen with its strength!
Alas! as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil
hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus, in
time, it became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy
then.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine,
mine forever now!

But the memory of past sorrow—is it not present joy?
I have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above
all, I burn to know the incidents of your own passage through
the dark Valley and Shadow.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her
Monos in vain? I will be minute in relating all—but at what
point shall the weird narrative begin?

At what point?

You have said.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both
learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will
not say, then, commence with the moment of life's cessation—
but commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor,
and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate fingers
of love.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general
condition at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of
the wise among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in the
world's esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term
“improvement,” as applied to the progress of our civilization.
There were periods in each of the five or six centuries immediately
preceding our dissolution, when arose some vigorous intellect,
boldly contending for those principles whose truth appears
now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious—principles
which should have taught our race to submit to the guidance of
the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. At long intervals
some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance
in practical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally
the poetic intellect—that intellect which we now feel to
have been the most exalted of all—since those truths which to us
were of the most enduring importance could only be reached by
that analogy which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally did this
poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague
idea of the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing,
a distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for
man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men—the
poets—living and perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”—
of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which
could have been properly applied only to the scorned—these men,
the poets, pondered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient
days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments
were keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so solomnly
deep-toned was happiness—holy, august and blissful days, when
blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest
solitudes, primæval, odorous, and unexplored.

Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but
to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the
most evil of all our evil days. The great “movement”—that
was the cant term—went on: a diseased commotion, moral and
physical. Art—the Arts—arose supreme, and, once enthroned,
cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them to power.
Man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing
dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him.
As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected
with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself
in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality
gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God—in
despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of gradation so
visibly pervading all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts
at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil
sprang necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man
could not both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking
cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot
breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as
with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks,
sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the
far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears
that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone—that
faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect
and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded—
it was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to
Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the
μουσικη which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for
the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since both were most desperately
needed when both were most entirely forgotten or
despised.3

Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!—
“que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment;”
and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendancy over the
harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing was
not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge,
the old age of the world drew on. This the mass of mankind saw
not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see.
But, for myself, the Earth's records had taught me to look for
widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a
prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and
enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer,
with Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In history4 of these regions I met with a ray from the Future

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

ture. The individual artificialities of the three latter were local
diseases of the Earth, and in their individual overthrows we had
seen local remedies applied; but for the infected world at large I
could anticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a
race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be “born
again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits,
daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed
of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth,
having undergone that purification5 which alone could efface its
rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure
and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and
be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect there
should be poison in knowledge no more—for the redeemed, regenerated,
blissful, and now immortal, but still for the material, man.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos;
but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as
we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant
us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You
yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your
constant Una speedily followed you. And though the century
which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together
once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience
of duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at
heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days
of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the
manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but
was impotent to undeceive you—after some days there came upon
me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and
this was termed Death by those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme
quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly,
lying motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer
noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the
mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by external
disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless.
The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so—assuming
often each other's functions at random. The taste and
the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment,
abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your
tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with
sweet fancies of flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than
any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance,
the balls could not roll in their sockets—but all objects within the
range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness;
the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into
the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those
which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former
instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it
only as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting
themselves at my side were light or dark in shade—curved
or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although
excited in degree, was not irregular in action—estimating real
sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility.
Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its
impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained,
and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the
pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognised
through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled
my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say
with a sensual delight. All my perceptions were purely sensual.
The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not
in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding.
Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your
wild sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences,
and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them
birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my
face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every
fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the
Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers—
you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark figures
which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line
of my vision they affected me as forms; but upon passing to my
side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans,
and other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You
alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about me.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed
by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the sleeper
feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear—low
distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling
with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its
shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression
of some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also
a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but
more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had
grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were
brought into the room, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but
less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in
a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each
lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my
ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una,
approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently
by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing
them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom,
and mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances
had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself—a

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

feeling that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love
and sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart,
and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded
quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely
sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In
its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a delight still physical, in-asmuch
as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the
animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve
thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung
up in the brain, that of which no words could convey to the merely
human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term
it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment
of man's abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the cycles of the firmamental
orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I measured
the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches
of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears.
The slightest deviations from the true proportion—and these deviations
were omni-prævalent—affected me just as violations of abstract
truth were wont, on earth, to affect the moral sense. Although
no two of the time-pieces in the chamber struck the individual
seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in holding
steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary
errors of each. And this—this keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment
of duration—this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly
have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession
of events—this idea—this sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes
of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal
soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew
by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly
these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally
they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms
affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity
pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the
idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged
in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment
of duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken
with the hand of the deadly Decay.

Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness
and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a
lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation
upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware
of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una,
I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the
noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those
movements which displaced you from my side, which confined
me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which
bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped
heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness
and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.

And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose,
there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul
watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort,
took record of its flight—without effort and without object.

A year passed. The consciousness of being had grown hourly
more indistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure,
usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming
merged in that of place. The narrow space immediately surrounding
what had been the body, was now growing to be the
body itself. At length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep
and its world alone is Death imaged)—at length, as sometimes
happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting
light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped
in dreams—so to me, in the strict embrace of the Shadow, came
that light which alone might have had power to startle—the light
of enduring Love. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling.
They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there
descended the coffin of Una.

And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been
extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

quiescence. Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to
dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at
length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead—instead of
all things—dominant and perpetual—the autocrats Place and
Time. For that which was not—for that which had no form—
for that which had no thought—for that which had no sentience—
for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion—
for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the
grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.