He set me free.  And it befell anon
That I must imitate him.  Then ’t befell
That on the holy Book I read, and all,
The mediating Mother and her Babe,
God and the Church, and man and life and death,
And the dark gulfs of bitter purging flame,
Did take on alteration.  Like a ship
Cast from her moorings, drifting from her port,
Not bound to any land, not sure of land,
My dull’d soul lost her reckoning on that sea
She sailed, and yet the voyage was nigh done.

This God was not the God I had known; this Christ
Was other.  O, a gentler God, a Christ—­
By a mother and a Father infinite—­
In distance each from each made kin to me. 
Blest Sufferer on the rood; but yet, I say
Other.  Far gentler, and I cannot tell,
Father, if you, or she, my golden girl,
Or I, or any aright those mysteries read.

I cannot fathom them.  There is not time,
So quickly men condemned me to this cell. 
I quarrell’d not so much with Holy Church
For that she taught, as that my love she burned. 
I die because I hid her enemies,
And read the Book. 
                    But O, forgiving God,
I do elect to trust thee.  I have thought,
What! are there set between us and the sun
Millions of miles, and did He like a tent
Rear up yon vasty sky?  Is heaven less wide? 
And dwells He there, but for His winged host,
Almost alone?  Truly I think not so;
He has had trouble enough with this poor world
To make Him as an earthly father would,
Love it and value it more. 
                            He did not give
So much to have us with Him, and yet fail. 
And now He knows I would believe e’en so
As pleaseth Him, an there was time to learn
Or certitude of heart; but time fails, time. 
He knoweth also ’t were a piteous thing
Not to be sure of my love’s welfare—­not
To see her happy and good in that new home. 
Most piteous.  I could all forego but this. 
O let me see her, Lord. 
                         What, also I! 
White ashes and a waft of vapour—­I
To flutter on before the winds.  No, no. 
And yet for ever ay—­my flesh shall hiss
And I shall hear ’t.  Dreadful, unbearable! 
Is it to-morrow? 
                  Ay, indeed, indeed,
To-morrow.  But my moods are as great waves
That rise and break and thunder down on me,
And then fall’n back sink low. 
                                I have waked long
And cannot hold my thoughts upon th’ event;
They slip, they wander forth. 
                               How the dusk grows. 
This is the last moonrising we shall see. 
Methought till morn to pray, and cannot pray. 
Where is mine Advocate? let Him say all
And more was in my mind to say this night,
Because to-morrow—­Ah! no more of that,
The tale is told.  Father, I fain would sleep.

Truly my soul is silent unto God.