reel away—­like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind!  Epilepsy so brief of horror—­wherefore is it that thou canst not die?  Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams?  Fragment of music too stern, heard once and heard no more, what aileth thee that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after thirty years have lost no element of horror?

[Footnote 1:  “Averted signs.”—­I read the course and changes of the lady’s agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but let it be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the lady’s full face, and even her profile imperfectly.]

1.

Lo, it is summer, almighty summer!  The everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savanna, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating:  she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker.  But both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of our common country—­within that ancient watery park—­within that pathless chase where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, and which stretches from the rising to the setting sun.  Ah! what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands, through which the pinnace moved.  And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers—­young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural caroling and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter.  Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and slowly she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows.  But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter—­all are hushed.  What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaken her?  Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow?  Was our shadow the shadow of death?  I looked over the bow for an answer; and, behold! the pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forest was left without a witness to its beauty upon the seas.  “But where,” and I turned to our own crew—­“Where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi?  Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with them?” Answer there was none.  But suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out—­“Sail on the weather beam!  Down she comes upon us:  in seventy seconds she will founder!”

2.