narrating the death of St John the Evangelist, John of Patmos;
the narrative interrupted by this gloss:

[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul: _first,_ to wit,
A soul of each and all the bodily parts,
Seated therein, which works, and is _What Does,_
And has the use of earth, and ends the man
Downward: but, tending upward for advice,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,
Useth the first with its collected use,
And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,--is _What Knows_:
Which, duly tending upward in its turn,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the last soul, that uses both the first,
Subsisting whether they assist or no,
And, constituting man's self, is _What Is_--
And leans upon the former

(Mark the word, Gentlemen; '_leans_ upon the former'--leaning
back, as it were felt by him, on this very man who had leaned
on Christ's bosom, being loved)

And leans upon the former, makes it play,
As that played off the first: and, tending up,
Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
Upward in that dread point of intercourse,