Lilith

Lilith
"But when you see your mother again," he continued, "you will not at first know her. She will go on steadily
growing younger until she reaches the perfection of her womanhood−−a splendour beyond foresight. Then
she will open her eyes, behold on one side her husband, on the other her son−−and rise and leave them to go
to a father and a brother more to her than they."
I heard as one in a dream. I was very cold, but already the cold caused me no suffering. I felt them put on me
the white garment of the dead. Then I forgot everything. The night about me was pale with sleeping faces, but
I was asleep also, nor knew that I slept.
CHAPTER XLIII. THE DREAMS THAT CAME
I grew aware of existence, aware also of the profound, the infinite cold. I was intensely blessed−−more
blessed, I know, than my heart, imagining, can now recall. I could not think of warmth with the least
suggestion of pleasure. I knew that I had enjoyed it, but could not remember how. The cold had soothed
every care, dissolved every pain, comforted every sorrow. COMFORTED? Nay; sorrow was swallowed up in
the life drawing nigh to restore every good and lovely thing a hundredfold! I lay at peace, full of the quietest
expectation, breathing the damp odours of Earth's bountiful bosom, aware of the souls of primroses, daisies
and snowdrops, patiently waiting in it for the Spring.
How convey the delight of that frozen, yet conscious sleep! I had no more to stand up! had only to lie
stretched out and still! How cold I was, words cannot tell; yet I grew colder and colder−−and welcomed the
cold yet more and more. I grew continuously less conscious of myself, continuously more conscious of bliss,
unimaginable yet felt. I had neither made it nor prayed for it: it was mine in virtue of existence! and existence
was mine in virtue of a Will that dwelt in mine.
Then the dreams began to arrive−−and came crowding.−−I lay naked on a snowy peak. The white mist
heaved below me like a billowy sea. The cold moon was in the air with me, and above the moon and me the
colder sky, in which the moon and I dwelt. I was Adam, waiting for God to breathe into my nostrils the
breath of life.−−I was not Adam, but a child in the bosom of a mother white with a radiant whiteness. I was a
youth on a white horse, leaping from cloud to cloud of a blue heaven, hasting calmly to some blessed goal.
For centuries I dreamed−−or was it chiliads? or only one long night?−−But why ask? for time had nothing to
do with me; I was in the land of thought−−farther in, higher up than the seven dimensions, the ten senses: I
think I was where I am−−in the heart of God.−−I dreamed away dim cycles in the centre of a melting glacier,
the spectral moon drawing nearer and nearer, the wind and the welter of a torrent growing in my ears. I lay
and heard them: the wind and the water and the moon sang a peaceful waiting for a redemption drawing nigh.
I dreamed cycles, I say, but, for aught I knew or can tell, they were the solemn, æonian march of a second,
pregnant with eternity.
Then, of a sudden, but not once troubling my conscious bliss, all the wrongs I had ever done, from far beyond
my earthly memory down to the present moment, were with me. Fully in every wrong lived the conscious I,
confessing, abjuring, lamenting the dead, making atonement with each person I had injured, hurt, or offended.
Every human soul to which I had caused a troubled thought, was now grown unspeakably dear to me, and I
humbled myself before it, agonising to cast from between us the clinging offence. I wept at the feet of the
mother whose commands I had slighted; with bitter shame I confessed to my father that I had told him two
lies, and long forgotten them: now for long had remembered them, and kept them in memory to crush at last
at his feet. I was the eager slave of all whom I had thus or anyhow wronged. Countless services I devised to
render them! For this one I would build such a house as had never grown from the ground! for that one I
would train such horses as had never yet been seen in any world! For a third I would make such a garden as
had never bloomed, haunted with still pools, and alive with running waters! I would write songs to make their
hearts swell, and tales to make them glow! I would turn the forces of the world into such channels of
invention as to make them laugh with the joy of wonder! Love possessed me! Love was my life! Love was to
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