My pulse vibrates irregularly, and my heart beats with an audible distinctness.

I am oppressed with a sense of my own nothingness--an atom, almost invisible, upon the breast of the mighty earth.
I gaze and listen.

I see, but I hear not.

Here is sight, but no sound.
Around me reigns an awful stillness--the sublime silence of the Omnipotent, who alone is here.
Hark! the silence is broken! Was it the rumbling of thunder?
No.

It was the crash of the falling avalanche.