The Haunted Mind

From "Twice Told Tales"

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
recollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of
your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
metaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that
realm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and behold
its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery, with a perception of
their strangeness, such as you never attain while the dream is
undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on
the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has
stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower, that stood within the
precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flings
its heavy clang over the slumbering town, with so full and distinct a
sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are
certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. You
count the strokes--one--two, and there they cease, with a booming
sound, like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before
you, till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window,
there is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent in
thought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams,
and two in that strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike of
joy and woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time,
and appears so distant, that the plunge out of a warm bed into the
frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has
already vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet
emerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space, where
the business of life does not intrude; where the passing moment
lingers, and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when
he thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take
breath. O that he would fall asleep, and let mortals live on without
growing older!

Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion
would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably
awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe
that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frostwork, and
that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be
time enough to trace