As its threnode-throbbing echoes on us ever
Their Farewell roll:—
“Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever;
Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long,
And so make life, and death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.”
THE TRANSFORMATION.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL MYSTERY.
I am not superstitious, not in the least. But that certain things which we cannot explain by any natural method may happen in the lives of us all, there is no longer a shadow of a doubt in my own mind.
I had gone to bed as usual and had been sleeping soundly one night, with only the faint glimmer of a sweet vision now and then flitting through my mind, when suddenly I was startled from my sleep into a lively consciousness of a strange presence, and weird, mournful sounds, as of a dirge, in my room. Moreover, there was a peculiar sensation in my head, a sensation that I have never before or since felt, a kind of pain, yet not a pain; for in some indefinable way it was mysteriously mingled with a peculiar, almost transporting rapture that seemed to permeate my whole being. Indeed, the pain, starting immediately between my brows and running back to my crown, seemed born of this pleasurable sensation, which had no local residence but was in every nerve and fibre, both together producing that indescribable exhilarating feeling that I imagine the truly happy in the next world possess. But, you say, surely the angels have no pain. I hope not; but this I have learned, that every pleasure of earth has its pain. And as I cannot say that this sensation was altogether that of a mortal, I cannot say from experience that there is a pleasure without a pain.