Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 2, August 1841 — John Shaqi
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 2, August 1841Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 2, August 1841
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it
was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties
which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to
the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy
delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook
for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after some
days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
torpor; and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me. Words
are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It
appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him
who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully
prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into
consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without
being awakened by external disturbances. I breathed no longer. The
pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not
departed but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions at random. The
taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one
sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your
tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet
fancies of flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the
old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The
eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to
vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their
sockets—but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were
seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the
external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid
effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in
the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated
it only as _sound_—sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting
themselves at my side were light or dark in shade—curved or angular in
outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree, was
not irregular in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance of
precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a
modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but
pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical
pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at
first only recognised through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I
say with a sensual delight. _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual.
The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the
least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or
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