“The leaves dance, the leaves sing,
The leaves dance in the breath of spring,”

or—­

“The great-vanned Angel March
Hath trumpeted
His clangorous ‘Sleep no more’ to all the dead—­
Beat his strong vans o’er earth and air and sea
And they have heard;
Hark to the Jubilate of the bird.”

These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem To a Snowflake—­the delicate silver filigree of verse—­rank him among the most privileged of the ministrants in Nature’s temple, standing very close to the shrine.  Yet here again there is repulse for the flying soul.  This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and sheltering, but it is not for him.  It is as when sunset changes the glory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenly fallen night.  Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead to him.  Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she is not friend but stranger.  Her language is another tongue from his—­

     “In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek,”

—­and the padding of the feet is heard again.

Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain attempt to flee from God.  Now at last he finds himself at bay.  God has been too much for him.  Against his will, and wearied out with the vain endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last.

“Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke! 
My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee. 
I am defenceless utterly.”

So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, he remembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when

“In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me,”

and,

     “The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
     I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist.”

All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God.

There follows a protest against those demands.  To him it appears that they are the call for sheer sacrifice and death.  He had sought self-realisation in every lovely field that lay open to the earth.  But now the trumpeter is sounding, “from the hid battlements of Eternity,” the last word and final meaning of human life.  His is a dread figure, “enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned.”  His demand is for death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the green earth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God.

It is the Cross that he has seen in nature and beyond it.  Long ago it was set up in England, that same Cross, when Cynewulf sang his Christ.  On Judgment Day he saw it set on high, streaming with blood and flame together, amber and crimson, illuminating the Day of Doom.  Thompson has found it, not on Calvary only, but everywhere in nature, and by tour de force he blends the sunset with Golgotha and finds that the lips of Nature proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  In the garden of the monastery there stands a cross, and the sun is setting over it.