ings of the fide on nights of phosphorescence!—how reptilian the subtle shifting of the tints of its chilly flame! Dive into such a night-sea;—open your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, as seen through the flood, like the opening and closing of an eye! At such a moment, one feels indeed as if enveloped by some monstrous sentiency,—suspended within some vital substance that feels and sees and wills alike in every part,—an infinite soft cold Ghost.
IV
Long I lay awake that night, and listened to the thunder-rolls and crashings of the mighty tide. Deeper than these distinct shocks of noise, and all the storming of the nearer waves, was the bass of the further surf,—a ceaseless abysmal muttering to which the building trembled,—a sound that seemed to imagination like the sound of the trampling of infinite cavalry, the massing of incalculable artillery,—some rushing, from the Sunrise, of armies wide as the world.
