noon
Convinced myself , I seek not to convince . There is , however , a remembrance of aerial forms -- of spiritual and meaning eyes -- of sounds , musical yet sad -- a remembrance which will not be excluded ; a memory like a shadow -- vague , variable , indefinite , unsteady ; and like a shadow , too , in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist . In that chamber was I born . Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed , but was not , nonentity , at once into the very regions of fairy land -- into a palace of imagination -- into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition -- it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye -- that I loitered away my boyhood in books , and dissipated my youth in reverie ; but it _ is _ singular that as years rolled away , and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers -- it _ is _ wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life -- wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought . The realities of the world affected me as visions , and as visions only , while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became , in turn , not the material of my every-day existence , but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself . * * * * * Berenice and I were cousins , and we grew up together in my paternal halls . Yet differently we grew -- I , ill of health , and buried in gloom -- she , agile , graceful , and overflowing with energy ; hers , the ramble on the hill-side -- mine the studies of the cloister ; I , living within my own heart , and addicted , body and soul , to the most intense and painful meditation -- she , roaming carelessly through life , with no thought of the shadows in her path , or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours .