ticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be "born again."
And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that purification[1] which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man: for man the Death-purged for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more for the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the material, man.
Una. Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos ; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men lived ; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave ; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.
Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their
- ↑ The word "purification" seems here to be used with reference to its root in the Greek πῦρ, fire. (Poe's Note.)
