Lilith

"Then remember, and recall. Trials yet await thee, heavy, of a nature thou knowest not now. Remember the
things thou hast seen. Truly thou knowest not those things, but thou knowest what they have seemed, what
they have meant to thee! Remember also the things thou shalt yet see. Truth is all in all; and the truth of
things lies, at once hid and revealed, in their seeming."
"How can that be, father?" I said, and raised my eyes with the question; for I had been listening with
downbent head, aware of nothing but the voice of Adam.
He was gone; in my ears was nought but the sounding silence of the swift−flowing waters. I stretched forth
my hands to find him, but no answering touch met their seeking. I was alone−−alone in the land of dreams!
To myself I seemed wide awake, but I believed I was in a dream, because he had told me so.
Even in a dream, however, the dreamer must do something! he cannot sit down and refuse to stir until the
dream grow weary of him and depart: I took up my wandering, and went on.
Many channels I crossed, and came to a wider space of rock; there, dreaming I was weary, I laid myself
down, and longed to be awake.
I was about to rise and resume my journey, when I discovered that I lay beside a pit in the rock, whose mouth
was like that of a grave. It was deep and dark; I could see no bottom.
Now in the dreams of my childhood I had found that a fall invariably woke me, and would, therefore, when
desiring to discontinue a dream, seek some eminence whence to cast myself down that I might wake: with
one glance at the peaceful heavens, and one at the rushing waters, I rolled myself over the edge of the pit.
For a moment consciousness left me. When it returned, I stood in the garret of my own house, in the little
wooden chamber of the cowl and the mirror.
Lilith
Unspeakable despair, hopelessness blank and dreary, invaded me with the knowledge: between me and my
Lona lay an abyss impassable! stretched a distance no chain could measure! Space and Time and Mode of
Being, as with walls of adamant unscalable, impenetrable, shut me in from that gulf! True, it might yet be in
my power to pass again through the door of light, and journey back to the chamber of the dead; and if so, I
was parted from that chamber only by a wide heath, and by the pale, starry night betwixt me and the sun,
which alone could open for me the mirror−door, and was now far away on the other side of the world! but an
immeasurably wider gulf sank between us in this−−that she was asleep and I was awake! that I was no longer
worthy to share with her that sleep, and could no longer hope to awake from it with her! For truly I was much
to blame: I had fled from my dream! The dream was not of my making, any more than was my life: I ought to
have seen it to the end! and in fleeing from it, I had left the holy sleep itself behind me!−−I would go back to
Adam, tell him the truth, and bow to his decree!
I crept to my chamber, threw myself on my bed, and passed a dreamless night.
I rose, and listlessly sought the library. On the way I met no one; the house seemed dead. I sat down with a
book to await the noontide: not a sentence could I understand! The mutilated manuscript offered itself from
the masked door: the sight of it sickened me; what to me was the princess with her devilry!
I rose and looked out of a window. It was a brilliant morning. With a great rush the fountain shot high, and
fell roaring back. The sun sat in its feathery top. Not a bird sang, not a creature was to be seen. Raven nor
librarian came near me. The world was dead about me. I took another book, sat down again, and went on
waiting.
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