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Then straightway a pang, quick, sharp, agonising, shot through my heart. I felt the stream in my veins stand still, hardening into a congealed substance - my throat rattled, I struggled against the grasp of some iron power. A terrible sense of my own impotence seized me - my muscles refused my will, my voice fled - I was in the possession of some authority that had entered, and claimed, and usurped the citadel of my own self. Then came a creeping of the flesh, a numbing sensation of ice and utter coldness; and lastly, a blackness, deep and solid as a mass of rock, fell over the whole earth - I had entered DEATH!
From this state I was roused by the voice of the Demon. "Awake, look forth! - Thou hast thy desire! - Abide the penalty!" The darkness broke from the earth; the ice thawed from my veins; once more my senses were my servants.
I looked, and behold, I stood in the same spot, but how changed! The earth was one crawling mass of putridity; its rich verdure, its lofty trees, its sublime mountains, its glancing waters, had all been the deceit of my previous blindness; the very green of the grass and the trees were rottenness, and the leaves (not each leaf one and inanimate as they seemed to the common eye) were composed of myriads of insects and puny reptiles, battened on the corruption from which they sprang. The waters swarmed with a leprous life - those beautiful shapes that I had seen in my late delusion were corrupt in their several parts, and from that corruption other creatures were generated living upon them. Every breath of air was not air, a thin and healthful fluid, but a wave of animalculae, poisonous and foetid; for the Air is the Arch Corrupter, hence all who breathe die; it is the slow, sure venom of Nature, pervading and rotting all things; the light of the heavens was the sickly, loathsome glare that steamed from the universal Death in Life. The World was one dead carcase, from which everything the World bore took its being. There was not such a thing as beauty! - there was not such a thing as life that did not generate from its own corruption a loathsome life for others! I looked down upon myself, and saw that my very veins swarmed with a motelike creation of shapes, springing into hideous existence from mine own disease, and mocking the Human Destiny with the same career of life, love, and death. Methought it must be a spell, which change of scene would annul. I shut my eyes with a frantic horror, and I fled, fast, fast, but blinded; and ever as I fled a laugh rang in my ears. I stopped not till I was at the feet of Lyciah, for she was my first involuntary thought. Whenever a care or fear possessed me, I had been wont to fly to her bosom, and charm my heart by the magic of her sweet voice. I was at the feet of Lyciah - I clasped her knees - I looked up imploringly into her face - God of my Fathers! the same curse attended me still! Her beauty was gone. There was no whole,- no one life in that Being whom I had so adored. Her life was composed of a million lives; her stately shape, of atoms crumbling from each other, and so bringing about the ghastly state of corruption which reigned in all else around. Her delicate hues, her raven hair, her fragrant lips - Pah! What, what was my agony! I turned from her again,- I shrank in loathing from her embrace,- I fled once more,- on - on. I ascended a mountain, and looked down on the various leprosies of Earth. Sternly I forced myself to the task; sternly I inhaled the knowledge I had sought; sternly I drank in the horrible penalty I had dared.
"Demon!" I cried, "appear, and receive my curse!"
"Lo, I am by thy side evermore," said the voice. Then I gazed, and, behold, the Fire was by my side; and I saw that it was the livid light which the jaws of Rottenness emits; and in the midst of the light, which was as its shroud and garment, stood a Giant shape - which was the shape of a Corpse that had been for months buried. I gazed upon the Demon with an appalled yet unquailing eye, and, as I gazed, I recognised in those ghastly lineaments a resemblance to the Female Spirit that had granted me the first fatal gift. But exaggerated, enlarged, dead,- Beauty rotted into Horror.
"I am that which thou didst ask to see face to face.- I am the Principle of Life."
"Of Life! Out, horrible mocker! - hast thou no other name?"
"I have! and that name - CORRUPTION!"
"Bright Lamps of Heaven!" I cried, lifting my eyes in anguish from the loathly charnel of the universal earth; "and is this, which men call Nature,- is this the sole Principle of the World?"
As I spoke, the huge carcase beneath my feet trembled. And over the face of the corpse beside me there fell a fear.-And lo! the heavens were lit up with a pure and glorious light, and from the midst of them there came forth a Voice which rolled slowly over the charnel earth as the voice of thunder above the valley of the shepherd. "SUCH," said the Voice, "IS NATURE, IF THOU ACCEPTEST NATURE AS THE FIRST CAUSE - SUCH IS THE UNIVERSE WITHOUT A GOD!