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"
"
"
Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"
And who," I demanded, "art thou?"
I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice,
mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am
pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.--My teeth chatter as I speak,
yet it is not with the chilliness of the night--of the night without
end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly
sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights
are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer
Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle of
woe?--Behold!"
I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist,
had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each
issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into
the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their
sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were
fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there
was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from
out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling
from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly
to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less
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