As we thus advanced forever through an interchange of nights and solar heavens, and as the interval grew still longer and longer before the last heaven we had quitted contracted to a point,--and as once we issued suddenly from the middle of thickest night into an Aurora Borealis,--the herald of an expiring world, and we found throughout this cycle of solar systems that a day of judgment had indeed arrived; the suns had sickened, and the planets were heaving--rocking, yawning in convulsions, the subterraneous waters of the great deeps were breaking up, and lightnings that were ten diameters of a world in length ran along--from east to west--from Zenith to Nadir; and here and there, where a sun should have been, we saw instead through the misty vapor a gloomy--ashy--leaden corpse of a solar body, that sucked in flames from the perishing world--but gave out neither light nor heat; and as I saw, through a vista which had no end, mountain towering above mountain, and piled up with what seemed glittering snow from the conflict of solar and planetary bodies;--then my spirit bent under the load of the universe, and I said to the Form, "Rest, rest: and lead me no farther: I am too solitary in the creation itself; and in its deserts yet more so: the full world is great, but the empty world is greater; and with the universe increase its Zaarahs." Then the Form touched me like the flowing of a breath, and spoke more gently than before: "In the presence of God there is no emptiness: above, below, between, and round about the stars, in the darkness and in the light, dwelleth the true and very Universe, the sum and fountain of all that is. But thy spirit can bear only earthly images of the unearthly; now then I cleanse thy sight with euphrasy; look forth, and behold the images." Immediately my eyes were opened; and I looked, and I saw as it were an interminable sea of light,--sea immeasurable, sea unfathomable, sea without a shore. All spaces between all heavens were filled with happiest light: and there was a thundering of floods: and there were seas above the seas, and seas below the seas: and I saw all the trackless regions that we had voyaged over: and my eye comprehended the farthest and the nearest: and darkness had become light, and the light darkness: for the deserts and wastes of the creation were now filled with the sea of light, and in this sea the suns floated like ash-gray blossoms, and the planets like black grains of seed. Then my heart comprehended that immortality dwelled in the spaces between the worlds, and death only amongst the worlds. Upon all the suns there walked upright shadows in the form of men: but they were glorified when they quitted these perishable worlds, and when they sank into the sea of light: and the murky planets, I perceived, were but cradles for the infant spirits of the universe of light. In the Zaarahs of the creation I saw--I heard--I felt--the glittering--the echoing--the breathing of life and creative power.