Death, A Cause Of Terror To The

Signatures Of All Things I Am Here To Read.

Let My Country Die For Me.

Imagine Some Foul And Putrid Corpse That Has Lain Rotting And Decomposing In The Grave, A Jelly-like Mass Of Liquid Corruption. Imagine Such A Corpse A Prey To Flames, Devoured By The Fire Of Burning Brimstone And Giving Off Dense Choking Fumes Of Nauseous Loathsome Decomposition. And Then Imagine This Sickening Stench, Multiplied A Millionfold And A Millionfold Again From The Millions Upon Millions Of Fetid Carcasses Massed Together In The Reeking Darkness, A Huge And Rotting Human Fungus. Imagine All This, And You Will Have Some Idea Of The Horror Of The Stench Of Hell.

A Certain Pride, A Certain Awe, Withheld Him From Offering To God Even One Prayer At Night, Though He Knew It Was In God's Power To Take Away His Life While He Slept And Hurl His Soul Hellward Ere He Could Beg For Mercy.

Sometimes He Caught Himself Listening To The Sound Of His Own Voice. He Thought That In Her Eyes He Would Ascent To An Angelical Stature; And, As He Attached The Fervent Nature Of His Companion More And More Closely To Him, He Heard The Strange Impersonal Voice Which He Recognised As His Own, Insisting On The Soul's Incurable Lonliness. We Cannot Give Ourselves, It Said: We Are Our Own.