Lilith

nor symbol.
We came at last to three empty couches, immediately beyond which lay the form of a beautiful woman, a
little past the prime of life. One of her arms was outside the sheet, and her hand lay with the palm upward, in
its centre a dark spot. Next to her was the stalwart figure of a man of middle age. His arm too was outside the
sheet, the strong hand almost closed, as if clenched on the grip of a sword. I thought he must be a king who
had died fighting for the truth.
"Will you hold the candle nearer, wife?" whispered the sexton, bending down to examine the woman's hand.
"It heals well," he murmured to himself: "the nail found in her nothing to hurt!"
At last I ventured to speak.
"Are they not dead?" I asked softly.
"I cannot answer you," he replied in a subdued voice. "I almost forget what they mean by DEAD in the old
world. If I said a person was dead, my wife would understand one thing, and you would imagine
another.−−This is but one of my treasure vaults," he went on, "and all my guests are not laid in vaults: out
there on the moor they lie thick as the leaves of a forest after the first blast of your winter−−thick, let me say
rather, as if the great white rose of heaven had shed its petals over it. All night the moon reads their faces, and
smiles."
"But why leave them in the corrupting moonlight?" I asked.
"Our moon," he answered, "is not like yours−−the old cinder of a burnt−out world; her beams embalm the
dead, not corrupt them. You observe that here the sexton lays his dead on the earth; be buries very few under
it! In your world he lays huge stones on them, as if to keep them down; I watch for the hour to ring the
resurrection−bell, and wake those that are still asleep. Your sexton looks at the clock to know when to ring
the dead−alive to church; I hearken for the cock on the spire to crow; `AWAKE, THOU THAT SLEEPEST,
AND ARISE FROM THE DEAD!'"
I began to conclude that the self−styled sexton was in truth an insane parson: the whole thing was too mad!
But how was I to get away from it? I was helpless! In this world of the dead, the raven and his wife were the
only living I had yet seen: whither should I turn for help? I was lost in a space larger than imagination; for if
here two things, or any parts of them, could occupy the same space, why not twenty or ten thousand?−−But I
dared not think further in that direction.
"You seem in your dead to see differences beyond my perception!" I ventured to remark.
"None of those you see," he answered, "are in truth quite dead yet, and some have but just begun to come
alive and die. Others had begun to die, that is to come alive, long before they came to us; and when such are
indeed dead, that instant they will wake and leave us. Almost every night some rise and go. But I will not say
more, for I find my words only mislead you!−−This is the couch that has been waiting for you," he ended,
pointing to one of the three.
"Why just this?" I said, beginning to tremble, and anxious by parley to delay.
"For reasons which one day you will be glad to know," he answered.
"Why not know them now?"
Lilith
Lilith 22