"--"And does it need the walls of a church
to renew my communion?" she asked. "Does not every moment stand a
temple four-square to God? And in that morning, with its buoyant
sunlight, was I any dearer to the Heart of the World than now?" "My
beloved is mine, and I am his," she sang over and over again, with all
varied inflection and profuse tune. How gently all the winter-wrapt
things bent toward her then! into what relation with her had they
grown! how this common dependence was the spell of their intimacy! how
at one with Nature had she become! how all the night and the silence
and the forest seemed to hold its breath, and to send its soul up to
God in her singing! It was no longer despondency, that singing. It was
neither prayer nor petition. She had left imploring, "How long wilt
thou forget me, O Lord?" "Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of
death!" "For in death there is no remembrance of thee";--with countless
other such fragments of supplication. She cried rather, "Yea, though I
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me";--and
lingered, and repeated, and sang again, "I shall be satisfied, when I
awake, with thy likeness."
Then she thought of the Great Deliverance, when he drew her up out of
many waters, and the flashing old psalm pealed forth triumphantly:--
"The Lord descended from above,
and bow'd the heavens hie;
And underneath his feet he cast
the darknesse of the skie.
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