Here, again, is another, in which the same sentiment is presented in a somewhat different form: 

    Is there nought better than to enjoy? 
      No deed which done, will make time break,
        Letting us pent-up creatures through
        Into eternity, our due—­
    No forcing earth teach heaven’s employ?

    No wise beginning, here and now,
      Which cannot grow complete (earth’s feat)
        And heaven must finish there and then? 
        No tasting earth’s true food for men,
    Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?

To the last of these verses a singular parallel may be found in the works of a much earlier, and a very different writer, only the affection there dealt with is filial and not marital.  In spite of this difference, however, it will still be much in point.

‘The day was fast approaching,’ says Augustine, ’whereon my mother was to depart this life, when it happened, Lord, as I believe by thy special ordinance, that she and I were alone together, leaning in a certain window that looked into the garden of the house, where we were then staying at Ostia.  We were talking together alone, very sweetly, and were wondering what the life would be of God’s saints in heaven.  And when our discourse was come to that point, that the highest delight and brightest of all the carnal senses seemed not fit to be so much as named with that life’s sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things bodily—­beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars.  Yea, we soared higher yet by inward musing.  We came to our own minds, and we passed beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by which all these things are made.  And whilst we were discoursing and panting after her, we slightly touched on her with the whole effort of our heart; and we sighed, and there left bound the first fruits of the spirit, and came back again to the sounds of our own mouths—­to our own finite language.  And what we then said was in this wise:  If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of the earth and air and waters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self transcend self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every sign, and whatever exists only in transition—­if these should all be hushed, having only roused our ears to Him that made them, and He speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that we might hear His word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel’s voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Him, whom in these things we love—­His very self without any aid from these (even as we two for that brief moment had touched the eternal Wisdom)—­could this be continued on, and other visions, far unlike it, be withdrawn, and this one ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholders amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one moment of understanding, were not this, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?  And when shall that be?  Shall it be when we rise again, but shall not all be changed?’[22]