British Museum.]

COLUMN III

HEABANI REVEALS TWO WONDERFUL VISIONS TO THE KING, ONE OF DEATH AND
OBLIVION, AND THE OTHER OF HEAVEN, AND DIES IN THE ARMS OF THE KING

"But, oh, my King! to thee I now reveal
A secret that my heart would yet conceal,
To thee, my friend, two visions I reveal:
The first I oft have dreamed beneath some spell
Of night, when I enwrapped from all the world,
With Self alone communed.
Unconscious hurled
By winged thought beyond this present life,
I seeming woke in a Dark World where rife
Was Nothingness,--a darksome mist it seemed,
All eke was naught;--no light for me there gleamed;
And floating 'lone, which way I turned, saw naught;
Nor felt of substance 'neath my feet, nor fraught
With light was Space around; nor cheerful ray
Of single star. The sun was quenched; or day
Or night, knew not. No hands had I, nor feet,
Nor head, nor body, all was void. No heat
Or cold I felt, no form could feel or see;
And naught I knew but conscious entity.
No boundary my being felt, or had;
And speechless, deaf, and blind, and formless, sad,
I floated through dark space,--a conscious blank!
No breath of air my spirit moved; I sank
I knew not where, till motionless I ceased
At last to move, and yet I could not rest,
Around me spread the Limitless, and Vast.
My cheerless, conscious spirit,--fixed and fast
In some lone spot in space was moveless, stark!
An atom chained by forces stern and dark,
With naught around me. Comfortless I lived
In my dread loneliness! Oh, how I grieved!
And thus, man's fate in Life and Death is solved
With naught but consciousness, and thus involved
All men in hopes that no fruition have?
And this alone was all that death me gave?
That all had vanished, gone from me that life
Could give, and left me but a blank, with strife
Of rising thoughts, and vain regrets, to float;--
Away from life and light, be chained remote!

"Oh, how my spirit longed for some lone crag
To part the gloom beneath, and rudely drag
My senses back! or with its shock to end
My dire existence;--to oblivion send
Me quickly! How I strove to curse, and break
That soundless Void, with shrieks or cries, to wake
That awful silence which around me spread!
In vain! in vain! all but my soul was dead.
And then my spirit soundless cried within:
'Oh, take me! take me back to Earth again!'
For tortures of the flesh were bliss and joy
To such existence! Pain can never cloy
The smalle