In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral
distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms,
of tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea
of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly
Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the
former, the torture of meditation was excessive- in the latter,
supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every
horror of thought, I shook- shook as the quivering plumes upon the
hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with
a struggle that I consented to sleep- for I shuddered to reflect that,
upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when,
finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world
of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing,
hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in
dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was
immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and
profundity.
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