night before.

For weeks he knew nothing of this earth--he was encompassed with the
spectres of a terrible dream. All was confusion, darkness, horror--a
series and a change of torture! At one time he was hurried through the
heavens in the womb of a fiery star, girt above and below and around
with unextinguishable but unconsuming flames. Wherever he trod, as he
wandered through his vast and blazing prison, the molten fire was his
footing, and the breath of fire was his air. Flowers, and trees, and
hills were in that world as in ours, but wrought from one lurid and
intolerable light; and, scattered around, rose gigantic palaces and
domes of the living flame, like the mansions of the city of Hell.
With every moment there passed to and fro shadowy forms, on whose
countenances was engraven unutterable anguish; but not a shriek, not a
groan, rung through the red air; for the doomed, who fed and inhabited
the flames, were forbidden the consolation of voice. Above there sat,
fixed and black, a solid and impenetrable cloud-Night frozen into
substance; and from the midst there hung a banner of a pale and sickly
flame, on which was written "For Ever." A river rushed rapidly beside
him. He stooped to slake the agony of his thirst--the waves were waves
of fire; and, as he started from the burning draught, he longed to
shriek aloud, and could not. Then he cast his despairing eyes above for
mercy; and saw on the livid and motionless banner "For Ever."

A change came o'er the spirit of his dream

He was suddenly borne up on the winds and storms to the oceans of an
eternal winter. He fell stunned and unstruggling upon the ebbless and
sluggish waves. Slowly and heavily they rose over him as he sank: then
came the lengthened and suffocating torture of that drowning death--the
impotent and convulsive contest with the closing waters--the gurgle, the
choking, the bursting of the pent breath, the flutter of the heart,
its agony, and its stillness. He recovered. He was a thousand fathoms
beneath the sea, chained to a rock round which the heavy waters rose as
a wall. He felt his own flesh rot and decay, perishing from his limbs
piece by piece; and he saw the coral banks, which it requires a thousand
ages to form, rise slowly from their slimy bed; and spread atom by atom,
till they became a shelter for the leviathan: their growth, was his only
record of eternity; and ever and ever, around and above him, came
vast and misshapen things--the won