I could not tell half the wonder of this strange race.  I could not myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their being.  They recognised my presence there, and communicated with me in such a way that I can only describe it by saying that they seemed to enter into my soul breathing a fiery life; yet I knew that the highest I could reach to was but the outer verge of their spiritual nature, and to tell you but a little I have many times to translate it, for in the first unity with their thought I touched on an almost universal sphere of life, I peered into the ancient heart that beats throughout time; and this knowledge became change in me, first, into a vast and nebulous symbology, and so down through many degrees of human thought into words which hold not at all the pristine and magical beauty.

I stood before one of this race, and I thought, “What is the meaning and end of life here?” Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest, it seemed to say: 

“Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and our autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul.”

I thought, “To what end is this life poured forth and withdrawn?”

He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being that changed itself into vision.

“The end is creation, and creation is joy:  the One awakens out of quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return we enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves.  After long cycles the world you live in will become like ours; it will be poured forth and withdrawn; a mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being.”

He disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute our ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought.

In that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal; having entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws:  the Power on its return would have dissolved my being utterly.  I felt with a wild terror its clutch upon me, and I withdrew from the departing glory, from the greatness that was my destiny—­but not yet.

From such dreams I would be aroused, perhaps by a gentle knock at my door, and my little cousin Margaret’s quaint face would peep in with a “Cousin Robert, are you not coming down to supper?”

Of these visions in the light of after thought I would speak a little.  All this was but symbol, requiring to be thrice sublimed in interpretation ere its true meaning can be grasped.  I do not know whether worlds are heralded by such glad songs, or whether any have such a fleeting existence, for the mind that reflects truth is deluded with strange phantasies of time and place in which seconds are rolled out into centuries and long cycles are reflected in an instant of time.  There is within us a little space through which all the threads of the universe are drawn; and, surrounding that incomprehensible