No deed which done, will make time break,
Letting us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due--
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?_

_No wise beginning, here and now,
Which cannot grow complete (earth's feat)
And heaven must finish there and then?
No tasting earth's true food for men,
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?_

To the last of these verses a singular parallel may be found in the
works of a much earlier, and a very different writer, only the affection
there dealt with is filial and not marital. In spite of this difference,
however, it will still be much in point.

'_The day was fast approaching_,' says Augustine, '_whereon my mother
was to depart this life, when it happened, Lord, as I believe by thy
special ordinance, that she and I were alone together, leaning in a
certain window that looked into the garden of the house, where we were
then staying at Ostia. We were talking together alone, very sweetly, and
were wondering what the life would be of God's saints in heaven. And
when our discourse was come to that point, that the highest delight and
brightest of all the carnal senses seemed not fit to be so much as named
with that life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to
the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things
bodily--beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared
higher yet by inward musing. We came to our own minds, and we passed
beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou
feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the