midnight
The mood into which my mind was plunged was incapable of any propitious intermission . All within me was tempestuous and dark . My ears were accessible to no sounds but those of shrieks and lamentations . It was deepest midnight , and all the noises of a great metropolis were hushed . Yet I listened as if to catch some strain of the dirge that was begun . Sable robes , sobs , and a dreary solemnity encompassed me on all sides , I was haunted to despair by images of death , imaginary clamours , and the train of funeral pageantry . I seemed to have passed forward to a distant era of my life .