"my own fact, my miracle
Self-authorised and self-explained,"

in the presence of which all hesitation vanished,--nay, thought itself
fell back before the tide of revealing emotion:--

"I paced the city: it was the first Spring.
By the invasion I lay passive to,
In rushed new things, the old were rapt away;
Alike abolished--the imprisonment
Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world
That pulled me down."

The bonds of his old existence snapped, the former heaven and earth died
for him, and that death was the beginning of life:--

"Death meant, to spurn the ground.
Soar to the sky,--die well and you do that.
The very immolation made the bliss;
Death was the heart of life, and all the harm
My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil
Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp:
As if the intense centre of the flame
Should turn a heaven to that devoted fly
Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage,
Saint Thomas with his sober grey goose-quill,
And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed,
Would fain, pretending just the insect's good,
Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again.
Into another state, under new rule