i

in a room in an hotel of the south some one was lying ill. it was march, and an airless, parching heat lay outside, the palms drooped yellow leaves, the bee-eaters chattering on a carob-bush dived luxuriantly into corn so green that they were in no wise distinguished from it; they turned and fluttered like butterflies, and from the bronze wing feathers a sheen of gold rippled over their emerald in the sun.

inside the room was as cool as it might be; when, from time to time, the shutters were opened the glory of gold and green outside flashed into sight. outside life was heavy with heat, luxuriant, substantial; bounded, limited and weighed down by its very fullness.

inside life had dwindled to a thin thread of consciousness, or rather it seemed like two strands worn nearly to breaking lying side by side. the one, the actual physical consciousness of a corporal life ebbing, of breath drawn with difficulty; of physical sensation not perhaps actually painful, but almost altogether wearying—a consciousness close to that mysterious land of delusions, where the physical symptoms are set apart from the personal consciousness and become external antagonistic forces. it was not intolerable because it was becoming a thing more and more external, more separate from that other spiritual consciousness with which it was still lightly entwined.

and that other thread of being, how shall one describe it? it was not quite continuous, for now and again the physical sensation numbed it; now and then, when times of refreshment came, the other like a stream rose and engulfed it.

compare that old image of the rhone and the saone. the one flows on, blue, clear, transparent; the other side by side, turbulent, muddy and swift. the man lying here seemed to himself to be both, but most of all the clearer thinner stream. the turbulence, the force of the other is daily less and less himself, more and more an alien power to which he yet jealously clings in the body of this death, and will not, cannot part from it.

and from time to time comes a new impulse of the stronger torrent—its yellowing waters tinge the blue—it is fuller, and there is a sense of well-being; and yet that transparent river of spiritual being, clear as crystal, has been sullied, it has disappeared.

such little trivial things too will give him back the life which is his power and his bondage;—the cup of iced coffee, that he looks for and can drink when other food nauseates, this makes him feel that he lives again and yet kills that clearer, sweeter, finer, life;—as much, in a sense, as overpowering bodily discomfort kills it—more, perhaps, for the more it overpowers the more external it is, the less it is himself.

if only he can keep from fear, for that kills all. and yet this thread of consciousness, which i have called spiritual, is not thinking any thought, it is seeing visions, and these visions are not of another world but of the sweeter, purer things of this world, transfigured and serene. he is a child again in a cornish lane, and the grass is deep and dewy, the banks are high, crowned with little bushes nearly bare of leaf, for it is spring; deep in the grass are primroses, long stalked and growing by the handful, you can thrust your hand into the damp grass, rich in little ferns and unnamed leaves, and pluck them so; between the primroses there are violets—are they purple or grey or blue?—and here and there a celandine, golden yellow. or he is a boy sitting on a rock; his feet are bare, the sea is shallow round him, the ripples run out, and the sun shining through them laces the fine sand below with gold. he tells the nurses that as soon as he is well he will go to the sea and dip his feet in it.

then he thinks of music that he knows, and it comes with unutterable sweetness of cadence like music heard in dreams.

and this radiance lies not only on things imagined but on things seen. the roses brought into the room are the roses of dorothea; the scent of the palm, in blossom outside, fills the room with an ethereal fragrance; and oh, those clusters of waxen palm flowers that his friends bring in and place in the green jug, surely it must come from that tree whose very leaves are for the healing of the nations!

it is only at night that the horror comes—no nameless horror, but the horror of fighting with the darkness; it is hot, and it stifles. the doctors have been, and he knows their report is not good though no one has told him so. the medicine bottles begin to change; there is one like a knight’s head near the candle, he knows it is only a cork in it, but it is very like the armoured head of a knight; and the darkness comes near, it oppresses all, laying a heavy hand on the world: it is too near, too heavy, all round us and weighing on us above.

he sleeps, to shout at the people in the room—he asks the nurse to expel the arab who is beside the bed. he knows they are not there at all, but he does not want to sleep, for he will wake in that horrible strangle of breath. it is so long, if only there were any light at all! weary, interminable length, and some lines of a poem run in his mind:

“an hour or two more and god is so kind

the day will be blue in the window blind.”

“thank the kind god the carts come in.”

they come in so early in london.—only an hour or two is quiet in the night, and you would know that the world is alive again, one would not have to keep the darkness long at bay; but here the night is day-long. brandy—what is the good? the smell is nauseating; but it is at his lips, and he drinks. has he slept? but it is black and still and dark, the dogs howl and scuffle past the window. hours more to come, hours of the blackness. one of these people who is about the room sits down by the bed. she is not terrifying. she is only an old lady with grey hair, but she expects something. she must be told to go away; they will not tell her, and he is angry with urging. but of course she was not really there, it was only a dream; so he must have slept again, and the minutes must have passed.

there is a hint of grey in the sky, the whisper of a breeze in the palm leaves—dawn is coming. now there is one hour of horror to go through, for the windows must be shut; he cannot breathe—he cannot live like this for an hour. the door into the passage may be opened, and the nurse’s step falls cold and echoing on the stone outside; no one else is moving, it is all grey and cold; he knows how that empty passage must look. this is better, for the blackness is going.

he sees the palm-trees outside above the muslin blinds; all the world is still and dead, its light gone out, but it can be rekindled. from the other window nothing can be seen but colourless sky, but the sky itself begins to kindle into life.

suddenly something falls across the muslin blind; a bar, and a dot of sunlight, of that molten gold of egyptian sunshine before the day has dried it into dust of gold. oh the extraordinary beauty of that gold! has sunshine been always in the world before, and yet we never knew it was like that? the darkness has passed, the light shines, the rapture and the beauty of the light spreads and broadens; the sky is awake, the garden is alive, the night is gone—and now the window towards the south is thrown open, and very faint and fair, a delicate violet light lies on the hills beyond the river. the air is blown in sweet, fragrant, unspeakably pure; and that carob-tree on which the birds sat yesterday is green and fresh, and below is the blue-green of the corn into which they dropped.

an arab is riding on his camel along the dyke, they are outlined against that purple hill. so people still live and move outside; they can move then, they can go where they wish. but he sees the sun, and the breath of heaven comes in, and the night is passed. he is tired with this warring against the night, but the light has come and the clearer, brighter river is flowing again. this is day.

what is this land where the spirit has been living? is it the land of beulah or the valley of the shadow? which is most real? he knows which is most substantial, but why is it most real? the instrument is more substantial than the melody and infinitely less real. yet when the veil grows thin which hides the glory of the vision, agonizing we entreat that it may not be removed and show the glory of the face.

ii

“the luminous

star-inwrought, beautiful

folds of the veil.”

many have written of the journey down to the dark river; few have told of the road backward from the river’s brink; a road of sudden ecstasies and sordid pitfalls.

for the radiance lay over the earth when he turned his face to it again. nothing was ever sweeter than the sight of palm leaves against the blue upon the banks of the nile. as the shores streamed past, with the rosy hills and yellow lights above them, winged feluccas furling sail, or sweeping like birds across the blue, with the roaring of the swiftness of their motion, he could lie and look—weary with rapture—watching the figures sprung from the old palestinian story—a rugged peter wrapping his fisher’s cloak about him, or urging his fellows “i go a-fishing.” but slowly, imperceptibly, the walls of the world closed in again; the sun beat pitilessly down; the heavens were brass, the earth iron. now and again they would open out at the sight of the sapphire sparkle of the mediterranean, or the deep, green growth under blossoming orchards of france. the wind became the life-giving breath of the spirit, and the soul would “beat” against “mortal bars,” seeing infinite power, infinite possibility, lying but just beyond the frail partition; a touch, and he might glide from the mountain side down over the trees that slept in the noonday of the valley; a hand on the eyes, and they would see to the truth that lies beneath form and colour of earthly things; a finger on the ear, and he would hear the very meaning of the wind and of the trickle of the stream—the gift of tongues would be an imaginably natural incident.

yet next day, at some trifling ailment, death and its terrors compass him about, and the man shakes as with ague under the fear of it and shame of cowardice. or he wakes every morning seemingly refreshed, only to fall by midday into a gulf of blackness and mistrust, sordid, not tragic, not dignified; and he sits tongue-tied, seeing a sneer in every smile, marvelling that men do not see the loathsomeness and terror that lie around them, but walk unconcerned among the dangers that encompass. then again life returns in full flood, and the fears and the terrors are as the fabric of a dream.

a long, strange way, full of inexplicable joys and sorrows, hopes and fears—a far longer path to travel in the spirit than that by which he came “out of the iron furnace, even out of egypt,” to the cool airs and sweet quiet of an old english country house in wooded downs touched by the freshness of the sea. there in the south, after the first bound towards health, life had stood still; the parched, sapless land could yield dry, clear air, sharp bright sunlight, but no refreshment of health and of spirit, nothing that could be compared to the misty mornings, and soft dewy evenings of a mild english spring. there the spring brings no refreshment; march reaps her harvest and the palm leaves hang dry and yellowish: here all life was stirring after the winter sleep, and earth was striving in her own finite way to make all things new. it was long since he had seen an english spring, and the eye could not be satisfied with gazing.

he first noticed it when, looking on the wintry copses, he saw that a thin ripple of life had run over the ground; among brown stalks and withered leaves so slight a flush of green that you could hardly say, “it is here” or “it is there,” nor surely know the change was worked to the outer eye or noted by the reanimate perception. then the fine veil of skeleton branches against the sky, through, under, beyond which he could see the blue downs of the coast, thickened, and they warmed in colour; till the brown of the elm became purple, and the brown of the beeches red, and the willow golden: then the elm burst into its little purple rosettes but the others stayed. and now crept out those little silvery creatures which the children call palms; like little downy animals, so sweet, so comfortable that the child must half believe they are alive. early in april the clumps of crocus in the turf, purple and yellow, were dying, but the daffodils were beginning to take their place, strewing the rough grass with flowers of milky gold. a week later the snake-heads were drawing themselves out of the turf, with head curved downwards like a swan preening its breast; primroses were waking in the lanes, the larch was hanging “rosy plumelets,” the silver leaf buds of the apple were out, and the flower of the peach.

this was cuckoo day, and punctual to the moment they hooted in the wood below; they had come in good time for the later nests, for the wagtails had taken their last year’s tenement again in the ivied wall, and the untidy sparrows were littering lawn and garden.

again a week, and the cherry buds showed fawn coloured; two days they stayed so, then a little tree burst into flower. two days more, and the orchard looked as if a snow shower had lightly fallen. at last one windy day white blossoms came drifting down among the scarlet tulips, and after this a rose-tinge passed over the trees, like a faint sunset on the snow, and then the glory was gone. but the expanding spirit could not bewail the glory gone, for warmer weather came with sun like summer, so that the plum-tree on the wall burst into flower one morning while one sat under it; a purple iris appeared, the blackthorn whitened, and in the garden beds the peonies and lilies shot up, anemones dozed half their radiant life away in royal groups, purple and scarlet. the remembrance of trembling and helplessness fell from the man, and he laughed to see the peacock’s grave and measured dance and the fierce cock chaffinch wooing in his bright spring coat.

so the spring returned, unfolding infinite new delights, sometimes hurrying, sometimes delaying; the copses clothed themselves in foliage as light as a birch grove, with all fine gradations of colour from the grey palms grown old, to the golden oaks beginning, and all life and all activity responded. though storms and chill might check the budding, the renewal of the spring moved in man and nature, as man and nature shook off the memory of death and winter, warmed and revivified in the waxing power of the sun.

and the world found voice for its joy, and it was joy to lie awake in the hour before dawn, while the last fine song of the nightingale still lingered in the memory, and hear the untutored song echo from bush to bush; when the thrush and the blackbird waked, and the starling chattered, and the cock chimed in with the lusty bar of music of his bugle call, and all in chorus welcomed the day, and ceased.

and one morning, as the man leaned out of his window to drink the sweet air of growing things, he saw suddenly, that the desire of spring was satiate. the trees had burst their buds and made a glory of golden leaves. life no longer pulsed, stayed, hurried on, but flowed in the full tide of summer. summer would burst into glories of beauty and odour on this side and on that, but the fresh impulse of spring was over. and the man leaned out and revelled in it. the rough bank had covered its scars with lush green grass; and leaves, stems, and branches were hidden. he revelled in the odorous, sun-warmed air, in the pleasant kindly earth with its beauties, in the sight and sound of the happy living things, and he looked away towards the hills, but they were hidden. then all at once he saw the blindness of content, and he cried out “oh my soul, where are the heavenly horizons and the distant misty hills?”

for while he gazed, the veil had fallen; at first translucent, radiant; threads fine as gossamer shining with light, so that they seemed but to illuminate the distance. then the veil was inwrought with flowers and as each new beauty came, he said “this is god’s work, and i can see him in this; all this symbolizes the light of his countenance, and i see him in his world.” and of each human interest and activity he said, “this is god’s work, for it is the work of his children.” so it fell fold on fold, thickening imperceptibly, full of sweet odours as it fell, and the voices of birds; and he did not know that the focus of his view was contracting, and that he was beginning to look not through the veil but at it. and he did not see that there was another hand at work and other threads in the web, grosser, more earthly, and darker yet; and that as it was woven, warp and woof, other hands threw the shuttle.

so it fell, closing out the heavenly vision, hiding too the clouds and darkness round god’s seat; and he found himself gazing on the veil which men call this world. then with a great struggle he cried, “in the time of our wealth, good lord deliver us.”

iii

the year came round again, and this man had found no contentment for mind or heart. he was such a one as had always believed in the unity of god and nature, had held the visible universe to be the robe of his glory and the material to be like clothing which partly hides and partly reveals the form.

he was a man whom god had chastened a little in the flesh, so that he might know the hand that touched him, yet had given him no loathsome

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evil thing to be with him, so that he must hate even the body that served him. god had given him amply of the good things of life and sufficiently of its sorrows to make him know the first were good. he had early looked into the empty tomb and seen that since even the body can in time elude it, it would be beyond reason and belief to dream that the soul can be prisoned by it. for the soul is not even prisoned by the body, seeing that it can walk among the stars, thread the secret places of the earth, or dive into the seas, while the eyes of the body stare upon a book; or it can fight battles and go through many strange adventures and visit distant lands while the eyes are closed and the body is laid upon the bed. therefore this man had long believed in his soul, though he had not taught his life and his fancies that though the material sometimes appears to be greater and stronger and older than the spiritual, yet that this is merely as the flower seems to one who looks not below the ground to be more vital than the root. so though he believed this, the man could not understand what the truth of the world might be. for he saw that although one may rejoice in its beauties and delight even in wholly innocent things, believing truly that they come from god, yet many men thus go astray. and when he listened to the voices of the dearest of god’s servants he became all the more perplexed. for one cried “all things are yours, things present as well as things to come”; but another said “love not the world.” again he heard one say “it is good to be here; let us build three tabernacles”; and saw him that said it straightway led into the dust and turmoil of the incredulous crowd. and the sweetest voice said now “deny yourself,” and now “consider the lilies, consider the birds.”

this man was a man who always loved the water. it made a great calm in his mind to see the sea spread calm before his feet; the storm of the sea filled him with life, and to die in the sea would, he thought, be like a child sinking to sleep in its mother’s arms. clear, translucent water drew him with a great longing, and he dreamt often that he should bathe, but as his feet touched the water it ebbed away.

now near his home there spread, embowered in trees, a great lake; on one side ran a road neglected and seldom used, from this the lake ran up curving out of sight. half-way up towards the curve there stood a great oak, and beneath this he often bathed. so being in this perplexity he went out one summer morning, passed through the sleeping village and by the church, and went down to the lake.

and in the turn of the year again the woods were lightly foliaged, and the branches shone golden between the leaves; the ground beneath the oak was carpeted with hyacinths and primroses, here and there a late anemone starred it.

here he undressed and plunged from a little height into a pool. his hands parted the water, which rushed up him as he plunged; then he gave himself up to the element and it lifted him to the surface. again he warred with it, yet moved by means of it, with steady stroke parting it, and again he turned over and yielded himself up to it, and the least movement was enough to keep him floating on the surface, and he rejoiced in the coolness and the purity. so when he had finished he returned and clothed himself, and moved on through the edge of the wood, looking at the water, wondering at a transparency that was so deep and the strength of the fleeting thing, till he came to where a little wooden bridge spanned the overflow from the lake; and upon the bridge a boy of about eight years old was sitting.

he was not dressed like a village child; his cap lay beside him with a little spray of reddening oak stuck into it, and he was staring at the water.

“who are you, my son?” said the man as he passed.

“i’m a king,” the child replied; “but i’m an outlaw just now, you see,” he went on, laying his hand on his cap. “i can’t get into my kingdom.”

“where is your kingdom?” asked the man.

“come down here and you’ll see,” he said.

the man sat down beside him on the plank.

“i can’t see much,” he said, “the water is dazzling.”

“ah, those are the sun’s messengers,” said the boy; “the sun sends messengers millions and millions of miles to the lake and they telegraph back to him. but you must look in another place.”

the man slipped into the humour of the child.

“now i see your kingdom,” he said; “it has greenish forests waving, strange transparent creatures move silently about.”

“no, that’s not my kingdom,” the child answered, “why, i can get in there; but it is not like what you think. those are slippery fishes and the bottom is all slimy. you must fix your eyes tight and not let them slip to see my kingdom.”

“now i see it,” said the other; “it has beautiful blue sky, trees stretch twigs into it which glisten like gold—one spreads leaves like jewelled glass with the sun shining through; one stretches budding twigs made of ruby; it is far, far below the shine and the fishes; and yet when i look it is quite close to us.”

“yes, that’s my kingdom!” cried the child.

“but isn’t it just like that behind us?” said the man, to test him.

the boy looked round. “no, that’s out-of-doors,” he said. “my kingdom is much more happy and safe, and the sky is more shining and the leaves glitter.”

“but it’s the sun’s kingdom down there even where the shine is,” said the man.

“yes, i know it’s his,” said the boy; “if he didn’t send messengers down there it would be all inky black and dreadful; but they won’t let his messengers get through, only a few of them, a little yellowish, greenish light.”

“is out-of-doors his kingdom too?” then said the man.

“of course it’s his,” said the child; “if he wasn’t there it would be dark, and the wind would sob and the trees shake their branches.”

“and what about your kingdom?”

“oh, he makes that for me,” said the child, “to be all my own.”

the man sat a moment looking at the water and was silent; a starling chattered on the boughs above; far away came the cry of the cuckoo; at the right hand of them there was a little rustle as a snake slipped over dead leaves and through the new living shoots of spring, and paused.

the man turned to the child.

“but is it real?” he said.

“it’s just as real as the sun and the water and out-of-doors,” said the boy steadily.

“but you said some day you would get in,” answered the man, tempting him.

the boy turned and looked at him, and his eyes were like a great stream with the sun shining through. “and that’s just as real as me,” he said.

the man snapped the twig he held in his hand, the snake silently slipped through the brake and was gone, and the man stood up, yet paused a moment looking down at the shining world, then he got up.

“goodbye,” he said, “i must go and look for my kingdom. i had one once but i lost it.”

“shall you be able to get in?” asked the boy.

“not just yet, perhaps,” he said, “but i can look at it till i find the way in.”

so he went back through the wood, remembering that it was written, “out of the mouth of babes thou hast perfected praise.”