make up the tumult,
here so faint where I float in eternal peace, knowing that they will
one day be stilled in the surrounding calm, and that despair dies into
infinite hope, and the seeming impossible there, is the law here!

"But, O pale-faced women, and gloomy-browed men, and forgotten children,
how I will wait on you, and minister to you, and, putting my arms about
you in the dark, think hope into your hearts, when you fancy no one is
near! Soon as my senses have all come back, and have grown accustomed to
this new blessed life, I will be among you with the love that healeth."

With this, a pang and a terrible shudder went through me; a writhing
as of death convulsed me; and I became once again conscious of a more
limited, even a bodily and earthly life.

CHAPTER XXV

"Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one,
and perhaps will."--NOVALIS.

"And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knocke with my staf; erlich and late,
And say to hire, Leve mother, let me in."
CHAUCER, The Pardoneres Tale.

Sinking from such a state of ideal bliss, into the world of shadows
which again closed around and infolded me, my first dread was, not
unnaturally, that my own shadow had found me again, and that my torture
had commenced anew. It was a sad revulsion of feeling. This, indeed,
seemed to correspond to what we think death is, before we die. Yet I
felt within me a power of calm endurance to which I had hitherto been
a stranger. For, in truth, that I should be able if only to think such
things as I had been thinking, was an unspeakable delight. An hour of
such peace made the turmoil of a lifetime worth striving through.

I found myself lying in the open air, in the early morning, before
sunrise. Over me rose the summer heaven, expectant of the sun. The
clouds already saw him, coming from afar; and soon every dewdrop would
rejoice in his individual presence within it.

I lay motionless for a few minutes; and then slowly rose and looked
about me. I was on the summit of a little hill; a valley lay beneath,
and a range of mountains closed up the view upon that side. But, to my
horror, across the valley, and up the height of the opposing mountains,
stretched, from my very feet, a hugely expanding shade. There it lay,
long and large, dark and mighty. I turned away with a sick despair; when
lo! I beheld the sun just lifting his head above t