And though the century which has since
      elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together once more,
      tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration,
      yet, my Monos, it was a century still. _Monos._ Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied
      at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general
      turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some
      few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
      ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while
      I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after some days there
      came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
      torpor; and this was termed Death by those who stood around me. Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
      sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
      extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
      profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer
      noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the
      mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by
      external disturbances. I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased
      to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses
      were unusually active, although eccentrically so—assuming often
      each other’s functions at random. The taste and the smell were
      inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and
      intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened
      my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
      flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old
      Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The
      eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete
      impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls
      could not roll in their sockets but all objects within the range
      of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less
      distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or
      into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than
      those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the
      former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I
      appreciated it only as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
      matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in
      shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same
      time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in
      action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance of precision,
      not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification
      more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but
      pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest
      physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon
      my eyelids, at first only recognised through vision, at length,
      long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual
      delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
      perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
      passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought
      into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some
      little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure
      none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all
      their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every
      variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no
      more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the
      sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears
      which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which
      broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
      this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke
      reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud
      cries. They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark figures which
      flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my
      vision they affected me as forms; but upon passing to my side
      their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and
      other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You
      alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions
      musically about me. The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed
      by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when
      sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear—low distant
      bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and mingling
      with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a
      heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of
      some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning
      sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more
      continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown
      in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into
      the room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted
      into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary
      and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great
      measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp, (for
      there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain
      of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una, approaching the
      bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side,
      breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my
      brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with
      the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called
      forth, a something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that, half
      appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but
      this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed
      indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away,
      first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual
      pleasure as before. And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there
      appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its
      exercise I found a wild delight—yet a delight still physical,
      inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the
      animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve
      thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up
      in the brain, that of which no words could convey to the merely
      human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it
      a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of
      man’s abstract idea of Time.