t 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 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,