Lethargy

“ He, or she, is found alone by a servant, or a third person, in a profound lethargy from which neither restoratives nor violent shocks upon the nerves can produce any awakening. In one hour, or a few hours, it is over. ”

“ Shaken and dizzied by the inrush of woe, the mind straggles wearily through hour after hour; the familiar duties are intolerable; food has no savour; action and thought no interest; and if for an hour the tired head is [219] diverted by some passing event, or if, oppressed with utter exhaustion, it sinks into an unrefreshing slumber, repose but gives the strength to suffer—the accursed mood leaps again, as from an unseen lair, upon the unnerved consciousness, and tears like some strange beast the helpless and palpitating soul. ”

“ Whatever griefs oppress my heart, whatever disquietudes torture my thoughts—all are dispersed in a moment; my soul becomes at ease; the fatigue of the body vanquishes the disturbance of the mind. There is not a woman’s glance which I would not forget at the sight of the tufted mountains, illumined by the southern sun; at the sight of the dark-blue sky, or in hearkening to the roar of the torrent as it falls from cliff to cliff. ”

“ Then the calm which follows the wake of the storm, the consciously averted eyes, and the very conscious breathing, which had in it something of shame; the almost aversion to speak or touch again, and over all, the deep silence of the moor, broken only by the burn and the whaup, and the thick cloud, kindly dark, that came over the moon.
But, behind it all, the remorse and the agony that would never die; the anxiety and uncertainty, and the secret knowledge for which each had paid so high a price. ”

“ If the body is weak from exhaustion and fatigue, the brain and mind become dull and sad, and the thoughts of a wanderer in such a desolate region as this, weary with a march in heat and thirst from daylight until dark, who at last sinks upon the heated ground to watch and wait until the blazing sunlight of another day, perhaps, may bring him to some place of rest, cannot be otherwise than of a mournful kind. ”

“ We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped, all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat, like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our frail bark! ”

“ And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. ”

“ From quite early days, the time of first waking in the morning has been apt to be for me a time of mental agitation; any unpleasant and humiliating incident, any disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart into my brain, which, unstrung and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed to view things with a certain poignancy of distress at that hour—a distress which I always knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet on the carpet. ”

“ How long this tempest of despair continued, I do not know. All that I can recall is, that after almost losing my own recollection under the agitation of the scene, I suddenly perceived that his moans were less loud and continuous, and that I ventured to look at him, which I had not done for some space. Nature had become exhausted, and he was sinking gradually into a stupor, which seemed something between sleep and fainting. ”

“ Then, with the long and labouring breath, the sudden fatigue of one who has leapt in a day from one plane of life to another—in whom a passionate and continuous heat of feeling has for the time burnt up the nervous power—he moved on eastwards, down the Champs-Elysées. ”

“ Fatigue and distress, added to the extreme cold and despair of relief, put a period to the lives of great numbers. Those who were able to stand were obliged to huddle up close together, and breathe in each other’s faces to preserve them from freezing to death, while their comrades were dying around them all night. ”

“ Drowsiness was overpowering, and though sleep meant death the eye-ball ached with weariness, yet we managed to keep each other awake, but eventually endured a siege of suffocation that was agonizing in the futile attempt to take a long breath, the gurgling effort leaving a heavy, suppressed pain in the lungs. ”

“ We hear of desperate fatigues, of constant dread of cold, of perilous excitements of mind and tension of nerves, so that we expect nothing short of fever, apoplexy, paralysis, or something as bad; and then, years after, we see the ancient favourite of the public driving about at leisure in a fine old age, and read the notice of his death at last, at long past the threescore years and ten. ”

“ The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless as to that.
For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor—anywhere, according as I happened to sink down—with a heavy head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came, one night which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I found I could not do so. ”

“ How exhausted we were with the fatigue of the day’s journey, how overcome by the rarefication of the air, the intensity of the cold, and how completely prostrated by hunger and thirst, is not easy to describe. ”

“ Then life ebbed lower in the bravest heart, And spake the leader, “If in ten more days We chance on nothing, then will we return, And set our faces once more to the south.” For that dread land began to close us in, With cold and hunger, bit at our poor limbs, Till life grew there a feeble, flickering flame, Amid the snows and ice-floes of that land. Then ten days crept out shrunk and grey and wan, With nothing but the lonely, haunted waste. ”

“ But we were not doing that; we were in constant motion. The arduous exercise that we were undergoing, our fatigue, the anxieties and fears that preyed upon the mind—each was contributing its quota to the dire and steady work of enervation. ”

“ My mind inspires me with a warning of coming grief, foretelling some calamity, some sad presentiment! A violent storm often overhangs the mariner, even whilst the deadest of calms prevail over the surface of the ocean, with no appearance of wind! ”

“ Fatigue, weakness, hysterics, and extreme depression follow. They leave the heated ball-room, when the morning has far advanced, to breathe the bitterly cold and frequently damp air of a winter’s night, and what is the result? Hundreds die of consumption who might otherwise have lived. ”

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your strength. ”

“ I know of nothing more annoying than that nervous thrilling or trembling, which runs through the whole frame after the mind has been troubled; it seems to me like the bubbling and restless swell of the ocean after a storm—one mass of fretful and impatient water, knowing not how to compose itself. ”

“ An accident always caused a feeling of sullenness in the works; this was now intensified by the gloom of the weather and the increased discomfort of the conditions; the thick and acrid smoke that would not rise, the floating particles of grime that clogged one's breathing-passages, the chill dampness, worse than wind, worse than rain, that greeted the man who went sweating from his furnace to draw a breath of air. ”

“ All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. ”

“ Famished for want of food, tortured with thirst that snow would not relieve, racked in every bone and muscle with the awful pain of extreme fatigue, and not daring to halt for fear of the drowsiness that fought the fatigue and presaged death, with the name of God often on their lips—but not in prayer—they degenerated in two nights and a day into a couple of unreasoning wild beasts ”

“ And I steered, too tired for anxiety, too tired for connected thought. I had moments of grim exultation and then my heart would sink awfully at the thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark deck, full of fever-stricken men—some of them dying. ”

“ I do not disguise from myself the greater lassitude I experience after a slight exertion, a higher tension of the nervous system, and an earlier access of that night fever, which, like the darkness of the coming winter, creeps daily on, shortening the hours of sunlight, and ushering in a deeper and more solemn gloom ”

“ And the strings of my heart are well in tune,
But they have not the same old tone.
I am tired; and that old sorrow
Sweeps down the bed of my soul,
As a turbulent river might sudden'y break
way from a dam's control. ”

“ It is so; and, when the dreadful repast is over, then again the pulse beats healthfully, and the wasted energies of a strange kind of vitality are restored to us, we become calm again, but with that calmness comes all the horror, all the agony of reflection, and we suffer far more than tongue can tell. ”

“ There is nothing more unnerving than this sudden illumination when we have been groping and struggling in the dark. Already exhausted by his physical efforts and by the want of food, from which he was beginning to suffer, he felt the shock so intensely that, without caring to think a moment longer, he managed to go to sleep, or, rather, to sink into sleep, as one sinks into the healing waters of a bath. ”

“ They think, always, that they only wish to rest themselves, and sleep a few minutes, and that then they will be refreshed, and be ready to proceed on their journey. But they are deceived. The drowsiness is produced, not by the fatigue, but by the cold. ”

“ Their breath is agitation, and their life A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last, And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, That should their days, surviving perils past, Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast With sorrow and supineness, and so die ”

“ Others have borne the first fierce heat and burden of the day, but they will rush in young and untouched by calamity—bounding, shouting and singing. They will come armed with all that long-borne horrors and maddening human fatigue most need. ”

“ At last the terribly nervous sensation passed away, taking with it all the pain, and leaving no feeling save one of intense uneasiness and languor, which the once strong man strove in vain to shake off, trying day after day to sit up, if only for a moment, and as often falling back upon his pillows from sheer exhaustion. ”

“ Frightfully bruised, you lie annihilated in the midst of a chaos of nameless pains; then, little by little, thought follows the vertigo. As sight becomes accustomed to distinguishing the objects in the gloom, you begin, so to speak, to recognise yourself in your despair. ”

“ Here all may sleep, for no dread warder’s warning Can come with clang of care and garish day; They sleep the sleep of night that knows no morning, No fierce noon-heats or chill at evening grey; No sound of those who watch or weep or pray [Pg 185] May enter here to stir the long, long rest Of those who slumber on oblivion’s breast. ”

“ On falling asleep at first, he looks, perhaps, drowsy and heavy, like a person dozing in church, or at table when overcome by fatigue, or stupefied by excess in wine, or by the foul air of a crowded apartment ”

“ The anxiety which weighed on his heart that night, terrible as it had been, was as nothing compared with that which was now strangling him, because there was at night, in the flat, an inexplicable noise. ”

“ The clamor oppressed the spirit, the dust fretted the nostrils and blinded the eyes, the sweltering heat baked and exhausted the body, and everything-buildings, men, pavement—seemed strained, breaking, ready to burst, losing patience, on the verge of exploding into some immense catastrophe, some outbreak, after which one would be able to breathe freely and easily in the air refreshed by it. ”

“ With the infinite slowness of exhaustion, his feet moved, dragged, went forward, while ever at his back those other lifeless feet rose and fell in a grotesque travesty of life, of movement, spurring forward his all but fainting soul. ”

“ But the tempest rages on, and they can only wait, five minutes, ten minutes, looking, hoping, fearing, without thought of self and almost without thought of each other, till suddenly as it had come, the rain ceases and the wind, with one final wail of rage and defeat, rushes away into the west, leaving behind it a sudden silence which, to their terrified hearts, seems almost more dreadful to bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone. ”

“ For hours we lay thus in all the intensity of an inner storm and stress, which it seemed could not fail to develop us, to mould us, to age us, to leave on us its scars, to bequeath us its peace or remorse or despair, as would some great mysterious dark experience direct from the sources of life. ”

“ Unknown the furies, and grim Fate! But now,
No gentle sight can soothe this wounded soul.
Then, only, can forgotten joy revive,
When through the air, and o'er the trembling fields
The raging south wind whirls its clouds of dust ”