How long I sat there, drowned in unrefreshing forgetfulness allied to sleep, I have no recollection, and no possible means of knowing. When again I opened my eyes, the morning was far spent. There was a dull pain in my head, but the circumstances I have just related were all so vivid that the whole scene instantly flashed across my mind. I thought surely it must be a dream. Could it be? I was sitting in my night-dress. I got up from my chair and went to my bed-room. There was my bed, just as I had left it when I rose to follow the strange spirit that controlled me. I went to the wall where I had seen the spider. True enough, there was the thread, but no longer illuminated, just where I had seen it. I put my hand to my forehead as one often does in wondering. When I removed it, there, clinging to my forefinger, was the web that had clung to my forehead. No, I had not been asleep and dreamed all this; that was plain enough. I returned to my chair. There on my desk, as I involuntarily glanced at the well-remembered spot, I saw a still more remarkable confirmation of my having been awake; for there lay the whole poem that I had seen woven by the first spirit, as perfect in every way as if it had been written by human hand. But the characters were no longer illuminated. They had burnt into the paper, and were as black as my own ink. They were all made out, too, in my own style of handwriting, though I declare and affirm to all the world that never before this occurrence had I written one line of poetry. Perhaps it would have been better for me and for you if I had stopped with this—palmed it off as my own on account of the similarity of handwriting; and if I had never trifled with the tricks of the muses thereafter.
I looked on my desk for the other poem, but alas! it could not be found; for, as I have said before, it was only psychologically present to me, while it was really present to some one else. In a few days I had the most remarkable confirmation of this—even more remarkable than what I have related in the preceding.
By the very next mail (I was teaching in the country and got my mail but once a week, on Saturday) I received a letter from my old chum, dated May 8, 1885. As I opened it, behold! that identical poem that I had in my mind seen wrought by the second spirit of beauty fell on my table. In a letter of sixteen quarto pages, he told one substantially the same experience of himself with two spirit-singers—one of them present, the other psychologically present, each unconscious of the other, yet each influencing the other in some indefinable way—as I have here related.
In speaking of the vanishing of the two spirit-forms, he wrote:—
“I firmly believe those two spirits were none other than the angel-forms of the two maidens the poems celebrate; that they have woven their spirits of beauty into these two embodiments of verse that we mortals may be the better for it; and that, when they vanished, they entered these two poems, where they still abide.”
Strange, but this is the same thought that I had had, and still do have. I most sincerely believe it is the only correct conclusion, though I cannot solve the mysteries that are connected with it. Indeed, it would be sacrilege to attempt it.
I still have these original manuscripts that were thus mysteriously wrought. They are lying here on the desk before me as I write; and as I glance across this page at them, the whole scene of that memorable night, more vivid, far, far more vivid than my pen has delineated it for you, comes flashing across my brain. In this quick, bright light of memory, reason marshals the long line of causes that produced this psychological phenomenon; I follow the approaching lines with my mind’s eye, until I am lost in the dim distance of their vanishing perspective, then return, follow again, only to lose myself in the same unfathomable mystery, and so again and again. Though I know some of the causes that produced it, I cannot reach the hidden ones. I could almost fancy still that I had dreamed all this did not these original manuscripts before me constantly remind me of the reality of what I have here set down. They are free for the inspection of all who wish to verify the facts I have related.
I challenge the world to produce two such similar poems, good, bad, or indifferent, written under such remarkable circumstances.
The events I have here recorded are the events of my boyhood, or early manhood, rather, faithfully told. I have long hesitated to publish them for fear that there might be a few in these days of fiction who would doubt their reality. But what makes them a hundredfold more wonderful to me is the truth of all their seemingly impossible facts.
My friend, you think this a strange, strange story, I know. Indeed, I think so too; far more strange to me than to you, for I have felt the truth of it and you have only read it. As true as these two poems exist, the circumstances under which they were written are far, far more strange to me than I can possibly make the story; far, far more strange to me than the weirdest, most wonderful story pen can write.