sleep, but I was still perfectly conscious, with a sense of unutterable
and blissful fatigue; a picture passed before me, of a calm sea, of vast
depth and clearness. There were cliffs at a little distance, great
headlands and rocky spires. I seemed to myself to have left them, to
have come down through them, to have embarked. There was a pale light
everywhere, flushed with rose-colour, like the light of a summer dawn;
and I felt as I had once felt as a child, awakened early in the little
old house among the orchards, on a spring morning; I had risen from my
bed, and leaning out of my window, filled with a delightful wonder,
I had seen the cool morning quicken into light among the dewy
apple-blossoms. That was what I felt like, as I lay upon the moving
tide, glad to rest, not wondering or hoping, not fearing or expecting
anything--just there, and at peace.

There seemed to be no time in that other blessed morning, no need to
do anything. The cliffs, I did not know how, faded from me, and the
boundless sea was about me on every side; but I cannot describe the
timelessness of it. There are no human words for it all, yet I must
speak of it in terms of time and space, because both time and space
were there, though I was not bound by them.

And here first I will say a few words about the manner of speech I shall
use. It is very hard to make clear, but I think I can explain it in an
image. I once walked alone, on a perfect summer day, on the South Downs.
The great smooth shoulders of the hills lay left and right, and, in
front of me, the rich tufted grass ran suddenly down to the plain, which
stretched out before me like a map. I saw the fields and woods, the
minute tiled hamlet-roofs, the white roads, on which crawled tiny carts.
A shepherd, far below, drove his flock along a little deep-cut lane
among high hedges. The sounds of earth came faintly and sweetly up,