I fell suddenly out of the sound and scent and pain into the most incredible and blessed peace and silence.  It would have been like a sleep, but I was still perfectly conscious, with a sense of unutterable and blissful fatigue; a picture passed before me, of a calm sea, of vast depth and clearness.  There were cliffs at a little distance, great headlands and rocky spires.  I seemed to myself to have left them, to have come down through them, to have embarked.  There was a pale light everywhere, flushed with rose-colour, like the light of a summer dawn; and I felt as I had once felt as a child, awakened early in the little old house among the orchards, on a spring morning; I had risen from my bed, and leaning out of my window, filled with a delightful wonder, I had seen the cool morning quicken into light among the dewy apple-blossoms.  That was what I felt like, as I lay upon the moving tide, glad to rest, not wondering or hoping, not fearing or expecting anything—­just there, and at peace.

There seemed to be no time in that other blessed morning, no need to do anything.  The cliffs, I did not know how, faded from me, and the boundless sea was about me on every side; but I cannot describe the timelessness of it.  There are no human words for it all, yet I must speak of it in terms of time and space, because both time and space were there, though I was not bound by them.

And here first I will say a few words about the manner of speech I shall use.  It is very hard to make clear, but I think I can explain it in an image.  I once walked alone, on a perfect summer day, on the South Downs.  The great smooth shoulders of the hills lay left and right, and, in front of me, the rich tufted grass ran suddenly down to the plain, which stretched out before me like a map.  I saw the fields and woods, the minute tiled hamlet-roofs, the white roads, on which crawled tiny carts.  A shepherd, far below, drove his flock along a little deep-cut lane among high hedges.  The sounds of earth came faintly and sweetly up, obscure sounds of which I could not tell the origin; but the tinkling of sheep-bells was the clearest, and the barking of the shepherd-dog.  My own dog sat beside me, watching my face, impatient to be gone.  But at the barking he pricked up his ears, put his head on one side, and wondered, I saw, where that companionable sound came from.  What he made of the scene I do not know; the sight of the fruitful earth, the homes of men, the fields and waters, filled me with an inexpressible emotion, a wide-flung hope, a sense of the immensity and intricacy of life.  But to my dog it meant nothing at all, though he saw just what I did.  To him it was nothing but a great excavation in the earth, patched and streaked with green.  It was not then the scene itself that I loved; that was only a symbol of emotions and ideas within me.  It touched the spring of a host of beautiful thoughts; but the beauty and the sweetness were the contribution of my own heart and mind.