I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my
hands folded in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept
over me.
Her tears fell on my face.
"Ah!" said the knight, "I rushed amongst them like a madman. I
hewed them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like
hail, but hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He
was dead. But he had throttled the monster, and I had to cut the
handful out of its throat, before I could disengage and carry off
his body. They dared not molest me as I brought him back."
"He has died well," said the lady.
My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a
cool hand had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My
soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when
the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the
down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow.
The hot fever of life had gone by, and I breathed the clear
mountain-air of the land of Death. I had never dreamed of such
blessedness. It was not that I had in any way ceased to be what
I had been. The very fact that anything can die, implies the
existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to
itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and
arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue
to lead a purely spiritual life.
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