nly 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 uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shot 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