I should turn earth to heaven, and be,
If bliss made gods, a deity!
Such was the description I gave of my own feelings, in one of those wild, passionate songs, to which this ferment of my spirits, between mirth and melancholy, gave birth.
Seldom had my heart more fully abandoned itself to such vague sadness than at the present moment, when, as I paced [pg 14]thoughtfully among the fading lights and flowers of the banquet, the echo of my own step was all that sounded, where so many gay forms had lately been revelling. The moon was still up, the morning had not yet glimmered, and the calm glories of night still rested on all around. Unconscious whither my pathway led, I wandered along, till I, at length, found myself before that fair statue of Venus, with which the chisel of Alcamenes had embellished our Garden;—that image of deified woman, the only idol to which I had ever bent the knee. Leaning against the pedestal, I raised my eyes to heaven, and fixing them sadly and intently on the ever-burning stars, as if I sought to read the mournful secret in their light, asked, wherefore was it that Man alone must perish, while they, less wonderful, less glorious than he, lived on in light unchangeable and for ever!—“Oh, that there were some spell, some talisman,” I exclaimed, “to make the spirit within us [pg 15]deathless as those stars, and open to its desires a career like theirs, burning and boundless throughout all time!”
While I gave myself up to this train of thought, that lassitude which earthly pleasure, however sweet, leaves behind,—as if to show how earthly it is,—came drowsily over me, and I sunk at the base of the statue to sleep.
Even in sleep, however, my fancy was still busy; and a dream, so vivid as to leave behind it the impression of reality, thus passed through my mind. I thought myself transported to a wide desert plain, where nothing seemed to breathe, or move, or live. The very sky above it looked pale and extinct, giving the idea, not of darkness, but of light that had died; and, had that region been the remains of some older world, left broken up and sunless, it could not have looked more dead and desolate. The only thing that bespoke life, in this melancholy waste, was a small moving spark, that at first glimmered in the dis[pg 16]tance, but, at length, slowly approached the spot where I stood. As it drew nearer, I could perceive that its feeble gleam was from a taper in the hand of a pale venerable man, who now stood, like a messenger from the grave, before me. After a few moments of awful silence, during which he looked at me with a sadness that thrilled my very soul, he said,—“Thou, who seekest eternal life, go unto the shores of the dark Nile—go unto the shores of the dark Nile, and thou wilt find the eternal life thou seekest!”
No sooner had he said these words than the death-like hue of his cheek brightened into a smile of more than human promise. The small torch that he held sent forth a radiance, by which suddenly the whole surface of the desert was illuminated, even to the far horizon’s edge, along whose line were now seen gardens, palaces, and spires, all bright and golden, like the architecture of the clouds at sunset. Sweet music, too, was heard every where, floating [pg 17]around, and, from all sides, such varieties of splendour poured, that, with the excess both of harmony and of light, I woke.
That infidels should be superstitious is an anomaly neither unusual nor strange. A belief in superhuman agency seems natural and necessary to the mind; and, if not suffered to flow in the obvious channels, it will find a vent in some other. Hence, many who have doubted the existence of a God, have yet implicitly placed themselves under the patronage of Fate or the stars. Much the same inconsistency I was conscious of in my own feelings. Though rejecting all belief in a Divine Providence, I had yet a faith in dreams, that all my philosophy could not conquer. Nor was experience wanting to confirm me in my delusion; for, by some of those accidental coincidences, which make the fortune of soothsayers and prophets, dreams, more than once, had been to me
Oracles, truer far than oak,
Or dove, or tripod, ever spoke.