The Pit and the Pendulum

I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber---no! In delirium---no! In a swoon---no! In death---no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. - Taken from "The Pit and the Pendulum" written by Edgar Allan Poe