Sex and Ecstasy

I was searching for a good explanation of Ecstasy and think I found one.

“…her arms and legs were around him, living ropes which bound him to her, silkily, sleekly tormented him… he gave himself over to the maddening, exasperating drive of a man grappling with fate. His mind reeled, slipped, became utterly dark and blindingly bright; for one moment he was within the sun, then the brilliance faded, grew grey, and went out. This was being a man… the pain was in the final moment, the finite moment, the empty, desolate realization… he clung to her like a drowning man to a spar in a lonely sea, and soon, buoyant, rising again on a tide grown quickly familiar, he succumbed to the inscrutable fate which is man’s.”

Source : Thorn Birds (a book that I am reading these days)