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The angel opened the door
A little way,
And she vanished, as melts a star,
Into the day,
And, for just a second’s space,
Ere the bar he drew,
The pitying angel paused,
And we looked through.

What did we see within?
Ah! who can tell?
What glory and glow of light
Ineffable;
What peace in the very air,
What hush and calm,
Soothing each tired soul
Like healing balm!

Was it a dream we dreamed,
Or did we hear
The harping of silver harps,
Divinely clear?
A murmur of that “new song,”
Which, soft and low,
The happy angels sing,–
Sing as they go?

And, as in the legend old,
The good monk heard,
As he paced his cloister dim,
A heavenly bird,
And, rapt and lost in the joy
Of the wondrous song,
Listened a hundred years,
Nor deemed them long,

So chained in sense and limb,
All blind with sun,
We stood and tasted the joy
Of our vanished one;
And we took no note of time,
Till soon or late
The gentle angel sighed,
And shut the gate.

The vision is closed and sealed.
We are come back
To the old, accustomed earth,
The well-worn track,–
Back to the daily toil,
The daily pain,–
But we never can be the same,
Never again.

We who have bathed in noon,
All radiant white,
Shall we come back content
To sit in night?
Content with self and sin,
The stain, the blot?
To have stood so near the gate
And enter not?

O glimpse so swift, so sweet,
So soon withdrawn!
Stay with us; light our dusks
Till day shall dawn;
Until the shadows flee,
And to our view
Again the gate unbars,
And we pass through.