The Night Land

And in my brain was, as I have told, the knowledge that had come to me

in all the years of my life in the Redoubt; and yet until that moment,

this Man of this Present Time had no knowledge of that future

existence; and now I stood and had suddenly the knowledge of a life

already spent in that strange land, and deeper within me the misty

knowings of this our present Age, and, maybe, also of some others

. To the North-West I looked through the queer spy-glass, and saw a

landscape that I had looked upon and pored upon through all the years of

that life, so that I knew how to name this thing and that thing, and

give the very distances of each and every one from the "Centre-Point" of

the Pyramid, which was that which had neither length nor breadth, and

was made of polished metal in the Room of Mathematics, where I went

daily to my studies.

To the North-West I looked, and in the wide field of my glass, saw plain

the bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit, shine upwards against the

underside of the vast chin of the North-West Watcher--The Watching Thing

of the North-West.... "That which hath Watched from the Beginning, and

until the opening of the Gateway of Eternity" came into my thoughts, as

I looked through the glass ... the words of Aesworpth, the Ancient

Poet (though incredibly future to this our time). And suddenly they

seemed at fault; for I looked deep down into my being, and saw, as

dreams are seen, the sunlight and splendour of this our Present Age.

And I was amazed.

And here I must make it clear to all that, even as I waked from this

Age, suddenly into that life, so must I--that youth there in the

embrasure--have awakened then to the knowledge of this far-back life

of ours--seeming to him a vision of the very beginnings of eternity, in

the dawn of the world. Oh! I do but dread I make it not sufficient clear

that I and he were both I--the same soul. He of that far date seeing

vaguely the life that was (that I do now live in this present Age);

and I of this time beholding the life that I yet shall live. How utterly

strange!

And yet, I do not know that I speak holy truth to say that I, in that

future time, had no knowledge of this life and Age, before that

awakening; for I woke to find that I was one who stood apart from the

other youths, in that I had a dim knowledge--visionary, as it were, of

the past, which confounded, whilst yet it angered, those who were the

men of learning of that age; though of this matter, more anon. But this

I do know, that from that time, onwards, my knowledge and assuredness of

the Past was tenfold; for this my memory of that life told me.