I knew,
How can I tell you the things that I saw with my--what shall _I_ call 'em?
--"feelers?"--O, crikey,
"FEELERS?" You know how the man born blind described such colours as
scarlet or blue.

XXVIII

"Scarlet," he says, "is the sound of a trumpet, blue is a flute,"
for he hasn't a notion!
No, nor nobody living on earth can tell it him plain, if he
hasn't the sight!
That's how it stands with ragged old Bill, a-drift and a-dream on
a measureless ocean,
Gifted wi' fifteen new-born senses, and seeing you blind to their
new strange light.

XXIX

How can I tell you? Sir, you must wait, till you die like Bill, ere
you understand it!
Only--I saw--the same as a bee that strikes to his hive ten leagues away--
Straight as a die, while I winked and blinked on that sun-warmed wood and my
wings expanded
(Whistler drawings that men call wings)--I saw--and I flew--that's all
I can say.

XXX

Flew over leagues of whispering wonder, fairy forests and flowery palaces,
Love-lorn casements, delicate kingdoms, beautiful flaming thoughts
of--Him;
Feasts of a million blue-mailed angels lifting their honey-and-wine-brimmed
chalices,
Throned upon clouds--(which you'd call white clover) down to the
world's most rosiest rim.

XXXI

New and new and new and new, the white o' the cliffs and the wind
in the heather,
Yus, and the sea-gulls flying like flakes of the sea that flashed
to the new-born day,
Song, song, song, song, quivering up in the wild blue weather,
Thousands of seraphim singing together, and me just flying
and--_knowing my way_.

XXXII

Straight as a die to Piddinghoe's dolphin, and there I drops in a
cottage garden,
There, on a sun-warmed window-sill, I winks and peeps, for the
window was wide!
Crumbs, he was there and fast in her arms and a-begging his poor
old mother's pardon,
There with his lips on her old grey hair, and her head on his breast
while she laughed and cried,--

XXXIII

"_One and nine-pence that old tramp gave me, or else I should never have
reached you, sonny,
Never, and you just leaving the village to-day and meaning to
cross the sea,