In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual secondly, that of the sense of physical existence. Yet in a second afterwards, (so frail may that web have been,) we remember not that we have dreamed. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. In the deepest slumber - no! In delirium - no! In a swoon - no! In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost.

What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe yet all was not lost. I had swooned but will not say that all of consciousness was lost. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation but just as my spirit came, at length, properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me the tall candles sank into nothingness their flames went out utterly the blackness of darkness supervened all sensations appeared swallowed up in that mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment.

I saw them fashion the syllables of my name and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. They appeared to me white - whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words, - and thin even to grotesqueness thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness - of immoveable resolution - of stern contempt of human torture. Yet, for a while, I saw but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. This only for a brief period for presently I heard no more. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution, - perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. The sentence - the dread sentence of death - was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. I was sick - sick unto death with that long agony and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

The pendulum edgar allan poe