 had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, railess and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn came and went, and came, and brought no day, and men forgot their passions in the dread of this, their desolation, and all hearts were chilled into a selfish prayer for light. And they did live by watchfires and the thrones, the palaces of crowned kings, the huts, the habitations of all things which dwell, were burnt for beacons, cities were consumed, and men were gathered round their blazing homes to look once more into each other's face, happy with those who dwelt within the eye of the volcanoes, and their mountain torch. A fearful hope was all the world contained. Forests were set on fire, but hour by hour they fell and faded, and the cracking trunks extinguished with a crash, and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light were an unearthly aspect. As if by fits the flashes fell upon them, some lay down and hid their eyes and wept, and some did rest their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled. And others hurried to and fro, and fed their funeral pyres with fuel, and looked up with mad disquietitude on the dull sky, the pawl of a past world. And then again with curses cast them down upon the dust, and gnashed their teeth and howled. The wild bird shrieked and terrified did flutter on the ground, and flapped their useless wings. The wildest brutes came tame and tremulous, and vipers crawled and twined themselves among the multitude, hissing but stingless. They were slain for food, and war, which for a moment was no more to glut himself again. A meal was bought with blood, and each sate sullenly upon, gorging himself in gloom no love was left. All earth was but one thought, and that was death, immediate and inglorious, and the pang of famine fed upon all entrails. Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh. The meagre by the meagre were devoured, even dogs assailed their masters, all saved one, and he was faithful to a course, and kept the birds and beasts and famished men at bay till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead lured their lank jaws. Himself sought no food, but with a piteous and perpetual moan, and a quick desolate cry licking the hand which answered not him with a caress, he died. The crowd was famished by degrees, but two of an enormous city did survive, and they were enemies, and they met beside the dying embers of an altar place where had been heaped a mass of holy things for an unholy usage. They raked up and shivering, scrapped with their cold skeleton hands, the feeble ashes, and their feeble breath blew for a little life, and made a flame which was a mockery. Then they lifted up their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld each other's aspects, saw and shrieked and died. Even of their mutual hideousness they died, unknowing who he was upon whose brow famine had written fiend. The world was void, the populous and the powerful was a lump, seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless. A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and oceans all stood still, and nothing stirred within their silent depths. Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, and their masts fell down piecemeal. As they dropped they slept on the abyss without a surge. The waves were dead, the tides were in their grave, the moon, their mistress had expired before. The winds were withered in the stagnant air, and the clouds perished. Darkness had no need of aid from them. She was the universe.