Lilith: A Romance

It was as if the splendour of her eyes had grown too much for them to hold, and, sinking into her countenance, made it flash with a loveliness like that of Beatrice in the white rose of t

ering; I was glad when

mething that glimmered, a little raised from the floor. Was it a bed? Could live thing sleep in such a mortal cold? Then surely it was n

r a sheet, straight and still-whether of man or woman I could

ew silent with dread. Through aisle after aisle we went, among couches innumerable. I could see only a few of them at once, but they were on all sides, vanishing, as it seemed, in the infinite.-Was it

a low voice, as if fearing to disturb his silent guests. "Much wi

aid his wife, and her clear voice, low and swe

end of the couches. They stretched away and away, as if for all the disparted world to sleep upon. For along the far receding narrow ways, every couch stood by

emble a long cathedral nave, now a huge barn made into a dwelling of tombs. She looked colder than any moon in the frostiest night of the world, and where

absorbed in perfect peace, but absolute submission possessed the placid features, which bore no sign of wasting disease, of "killing care or grief of heart": if pain had been there, it was long charmed asleep, never again to wake. Many were the beautiful that there lay very still-some of them mere children; but I did not see one infant. The most beautiful of all was a lady whose white hair, and that alone, suggested her old when first she fell asleep. On her stately countenance rested-not submission, but a right noble acquiescence, an assurance, firm as the foundation

tside the sheet, and her hand lay with the palm upward, in its centre a dark spot. Next to her was the stalwart figure of a man of middle age. His arm too

wife?" whispered the sexton, bendi

d to himself: "the nail fou

ventured

t dead?" I a

you would imagine another.-This is but one of my treasure vaults," he went on, "and all my guests are not laid in vaults: out there on the moor they lie thick as the leaves of a for

in the corrupting

th; he buries very few under it! In your world he lays huge stones on them, as if to keep them down; I watch for the hour to ring the resurrection-bell, and wake those that are still

n this world of the dead, the raven and his wife were the only living I had yet seen: whither should I turn for help? I was lost in a space larger than imaginat

e differences beyond my perc

to come alive, long before they came to us; and when such are indeed dead, that instant they will wake and leave us. Almost every night some rise and go.

eginning to tremble, and a

day you will be glad

know th

u will know w

ad, and I am alive!"

-not nearly enough! Blessed be the true life th

o cold to let on

heir wounds.-Do not be a coward, Mr. Vane. Turn your back on fear, and your face to whatever may come. Give y

candle in her hand, at the foot of it. Her eyes were full of light,

d-chamber?" I cried aloud. "I will not. I will li

you that the dea

nal leaves that

llomb

he lib

wo gleamed out like spectres that waited on the dead; neither

the flock of the great shepher

turned

f the place pure and sweet whe

h, so cold!

thyself alive, hast brought into this chamber the odours of death, and i

t chamber, and I was left alone

ed to

grew calm, the still shapes grew terrible. At last, with loud offence to the gracious silence, I r

opened it, and was aware of the dim light of a lamp. I stood

k to one? Which was the real-what I now saw, or what I had just c

on a couch, a

d on the masked door: when I woke, there they shone, and thither they drew my eyes. With the feeling that behind it must lie the boundless chamber I had left by

"has put that book in t

nd time, flung it on a nest of drawers in a dark

cried, and went t

hat it was in my father's writing and of some length. The words on which first my eyes fell, at once made me eager to