Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/243

 starts snorting, from the bottomless abyss, the sea-monster Death; and the monster's throat yawns wide, and the silent sea rushes into it in whirlpools, and hurries him along with it.

But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart silent, though deadly cold, laid the leaves together; looked softly and firmly over the churchyard, where, in the moonshine, the grave of his father was to be distinguished; gazed timidly up to the sky, full of stars, which a white overarching laurel-tree screened from his sight;—and though he longed to be in bed, to settle there and sleep it off, yet he paused at the window to pray for his wife and child, in case this night were his last.

At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve; but, from the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the clock-hammer struck without stopping,—and he heard with horror the chains and wheels rattling along; and he felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all the longer hours which he might yet have had to live,—and now, to his eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered on the church-windows, and in the church there were lights flitting to and fro, and in the charnel-house was a motion and a tumult.

His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, and closed his eyes that he might not see;—but Imagination in the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased these hollow, fever-born masks alternately into lightning and shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts grew colored visions, and he dreamed this dream. He was standing at the window looking out into the churchyard; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones