And I feared much,
For lo! when I looked down deep under me
The little earth was such a little thing,
How in the vasty dark find her again? 
The crescent moon a moored boat hard by,
Did wait on her and touch her ragged rims
With a small gift of silver. 
                              Love! my life! 
Hubert, while I yet wept, O we were there. 
A menai of Angels first, a swarm of stars
Took us among them (all alive with stars
Shining and shouting each to each that place),
The feathered multitude did lie so thick
We walked upon them, walked on outspread wings,
And the great gates were standing open. 
                                         Love! 
The country is not what you think; but oh! 
When you have seen it nothing else contents. 
The voice, the vision was not what you think—­
But oh! it was all.  It was the meaning of life,
Excellent consummation of desires
For ever, let into the heart with pain
Most sweet.  That smile did take the feeding soul
Deeper and deeper into heaven.  The sward
(For I had bowed my face on it) I found
Grew in my spirit’s longed for native land—­
At last I was at home.’ 
                         And here she paused: 
I must needs weep.  I have not been in heaven,
Therefore she could not tell me what she heard,
Therefore she might not tell me what she saw,
Only I understood that One drew near
Who said to her she should e’en come, ‘Because,’
Said He, ’My Father loves Me.  I will ask
He send, a guiding Angel for My sake,
Since the dark way is long, and rough, and hard,
So that I shall not lose whom I love—­thee.’

Other words wonderful of things not known,
When she had uttered, I gave hope away,
Cried out, and took her in despairing arms,
Asking no more.  Then while the comfortless
Dawn till night fainted grew, alas! a key
That with abhorred jarring probed the door. 
We kissed, we looked, unlocked our arms.  She sighed
‘Remember,’ ‘Ay, I will remember.  What?’
‘To come to me.’  Then I, thrust roughly forth—­
I, bereft, dumb, forlorn, unremedied
My hurt for ever, stumbled blindly down,
And the great door was shut behind and chained.

The weird pathetic scarlet of day dawning,
More kin to death of night than birth of morn,
Peered o’er yon hill bristling with spires of pine. 
I heard the crying of the men condemned,
Men racked, that should be martyr’d presently,
And my great grief met theirs with might; I held
All our poor earth’s despairs in my poor breast,
The choking reek, the faggots were all mine. 
Ay, and the partings they were all mine—­mine. 
Father, it will be very good methinks
To die so, to die soon.  It doth appease
The soul in misery for its fellows, when
There is no help, to suffer even as they.