Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/268

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amphitheatre. The mind, finding no rest on their bald summits, wanders into space. The moon, weary with long vigil, sinks to her repose. The Pleiades no longer breathe their sweet influences. Cassiopea and Andromeda and Orion and all the infinite host of unnumbered constellations, fail to infuse one spark of joy into this dead atmosphere. They have lost all their tenderness, and are cold and pulseless. The eye leaves them and returns to earth, and the trembling ear awaits something that will break the oppressive stillness. But no footfall of living thing reaches it; no wild beast howls through the solitude. There is no cry of bird to enliven the scene; no tree, among whose branches the winds can sigh and moan. The pulsations of my own heart are alone heard in the great void; and as the blood courses through the sensitive organization of the ear, I am oppressed as with discordant sounds. Silence has ceased to be negative. It has become endowed with positive attributes. I seem to hear and see and feel it. It stands forth as a frightful spectre, filling the mind with the overpowering consciousness of universal death,—proclaiming the end of all things, and heralding the everlasting future. Its presence is unendurable. I spring from the rock upon which I have been seated, I plant my feet heavily in the snow to banish its awful presence,—and the sound rolls through the night and drives away the phantom.

I have seen no expression on the face of Nature so filled with terror as.