led with new
energies in these quickening skies: I am immortal as thou art; yet shalt
thou fear me, and heed my biddings: wherefore hast thou dared--?' but my
wrathful eye looked on her bewitching beauty, and I had no tongue to
chide, as she said in the sobriety of loveliness,--'My son, have I not
answered thy prayer? yet but in part; behold, I have good store of
precious things to show thee:' with that, she kissed my brow, and I
fell into an ecstasy.

"I perceived that I was come to the kingdom of disembodied spirits, and
they crowded around me as around some strange creature, clustering with
earnest looks, perchance to inquire of me somewhat from the world I had
just left. Although impalpable, and moving through each other,
transparent and half-invisible, each wore the outward shape and seeming
garments he had mostly been known by upon earth: and my reason whispered
me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the
last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body
of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the
gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his
spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had
imprisoned it.--Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and
spake to me soothingly, saying, 'Knowest thou any of these?'--and I
answered, 'Millions upon millions, a widespread inundation of shadowy
forms, from martyred Abel to the still-born babe of this hour I behold
the gathered dead; millions upon millions, like the leaves of the
western forests, like the blades of grass upon the prairie, they are
here crowding innumerable: yet should my spirit know some among them, as
having held sweet converse with their minds in books; only this boon,
sweet mistress, from yonder mingled harvest of the dead, in grace cull
me mine intimates, that I may see them even with my bodily eyes.' So she
smiled, and waved her fair hand: and at once, a few, a very few, not all
worthiest, not all best, came nearer to me with looks of love; and I
knew them each one, for I had met and somewhile walked with each of
them in the paths of meditation; and some appeared less beatified than
others, and some even meanly clad as in garments all of earth, yet I
loved them more than the remainder of that crowded world, though not
equally, nor yet all for merit, but in that I had sympathy with these as
my friends. And each spake kindly to me in his ton