Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/286

260 260 THE FIRST MORRIS ' One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell, Now choose one cloth for ever, which they be I will not tell you, you must somehow tell Of your own strength and mightiness ; here, see ! ' Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes, At foot of your familiar bed to see A great God's angel standing, with such dyes. Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands. Held out two ways, light from the inner skies Showing him well, and making his commands Seem to be God's commands, moreover, too. Holding within his hands the cloths on wands ; And one of these strange choosing cloths was blue. Wavy and long, and one cut short and red. . ." Thought is a colour, anguish a painted emblem; and even the customary veils and soft remissions of metaphor are abolished, so that the imagery starts into the foreground, and ranks inseparably among the real. Even the strange vocal stress of the utterance helps, curiously, to increase this visual poignancy : for the rigour of the voices, being unvarying, seems to reduce the language to a colourless medium, a neutral lens through which the sight slips unaware. All the duties of comprehension devolve upon the eye : thought has become pure vision. The effect upon the reader's mind is strange. Dizzied by this ceaseless play upon one nerve — half -drugged and half-excited by the level drilling of the litany-like metre — deprived of all intellectual food yet pierced and lit by vivid apprehensions — it tastes a rare mixture of exultation and quiescence, passes into a state akin to trance. It is a condition that has a real resemblance to the contemplative ecstasy of the mystic. The senses, receiving registrations of such sharpness, seem to be