Awake--yes, that was certain; but where was I? No longer in my own room; I was standing in a silvery gloom, my temples still throbbing with the agony of my dream. Not yet fully master of my faculties, the idea possessed me that, in my course through space, I had fallen upon a grey cloud, which was bearing me gently onwards towards a great brightness, some glimpse of which I saw above the cloud's edge. Guided by the same soft hand, I reached the edge and sat down upon it. The brightness broke upon my eyes in a white lustre, which for a moment forced me to cover my face with my hands. Then I looked again. Below me, and close at hand, stretched a vast plain, lit by a ghastly light. Vividly clear it was, but terrible: for there was no colour on those pinnacled mountain-summits, nor along their headlong flanks, nor in the depths of the gaping valleys. No colour, no vegetation, no life: but everywhere a frozen, voiceless, stony immobility, and a metallic lustre, as if the silent feet of innumerable centuries had worn the surface hard and smooth. It was a land of dead volcanoes, whose jagged shadows, blacker than night, lay like blots along the plain. No kindly winds blew down the awful cañons; no tender atmosphere softened their iron outlines; no clouds mercifully swathed their grim nakedness. Here seemed to lie the mighty bones of a creation which God had cursed and forgotten, upon which the sun shone only in mockery, and which was cast adrift upon the universe as an appalling warning, and symbol of the doom of sin. Amidst the happy throng of living, sentient planets, this burnt and frozen skeleton was doomed to glide eternally, seen but unseeing, fleeing for ever, but for ever held in place and pitilessly exposed by a mysterious spell. And what was this accursed world, that hung so near beneath my feet that one step, it seemed, would cast me downward upon its needle peaks? Had it a name? That which it had borne when living was buried in the oblivion of countless ages; never again, through all time to come, should tongue of man repeat its forbidden syllables: but there was another name, lawful to know and speak, which now rose intuitively to my lips and found utterance there: 'the Moon!' And at my ear a low voice that I dimly recognised seemed to confirm my divination: 'Yes,' it said, 'the Moon!' I pressed the little hand that still lay within my own, and thanked God that in this hour of unearthly vision it linked me with humanity.