Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness with dust among her golden hair and her bright garments all faded and defaced , stealing from your glance with drooping head , as fearful of reproach : she was your fondest hope , but a delusive one ; so call her Disappointment now . A sterner form succeeds , with a brow of wrinkles , a look and gesture of iron authority ; there is no name for him unless it be Fatality -- an emblem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes , a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life , and were bound his slave for ever by once obeying him . See those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness , the writhed lip of scorn , the mockery of that living eye , the pointed finger touching the sore place in your heart ! Do you remember any act of enormous folly at which you would blush even in the remotest cavern of the earth ? Then recognize your shame . Pass , wretched band ! Well for the wakeful one if , riotously miserable , a fiercer tribe do not surround him -- the devils of a guilty heart that holds its hell within itself . What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend ? What if the fiend should come in woman 's garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation , and lie down by your side ? What if he should stand at your bed 's foot in the likeness of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud ? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul , this heavy , heavy sinking of the spirits , this wintry gloom about the heart , this indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the chamber . By a desperate effort you start upright , breaking from a sort of conscious sleep and gazing wildly round the bed , as if the fiends were anywhere but in your haunted mind . At the same moment the slumbering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the whole outer room and flickers through the door of the bedchamber , but can not quite dispel its obscurity . Your eye searches for whatever may remind you of the living world . With eager minuteness you take note of the table near the fireplace , the book with an ivory knife between its leaves , the unfolded letter , the hat and the fallen glove . Soon the flame vanishes , and with it the whole scene is gone , though its image remains an instant in your mind 's eye when darkness has swallowed the reality . Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before , but not the same gloom within your breast . As your head falls back upon the pillow you think -- in a whisper be it spoken -- how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and fall of a softer breathing than your own , the slight pressure of a tenderer bosom , the quiet throb of a purer heart , imparting its peacefulness to your troubled one , as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her dream . Her influence is over you , though she have no existence but in that momentary image . You sink down in a flowery spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness , while your thoughts rise before you in pictures , all disconnected , yet all assimilated by a pervading gladsomeness and beauty .
The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children round the door XXXXX a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees at the corner of a rustic lane .
about amid from if of on though unless within without