The fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones. Then "the many-tattered little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother," "the sickly babe with its spotted face," and the Tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief. (ll. 48-82.) In short, read the second Section in its entirety. Such description is certainly not "poetic." But Browning knew well what he was doing. Influenced doubtless by his love of striking effects, we cannot but feel that he makes the unpleasing characteristics of the congregation assembled within the walls of Zion Chapel the more repellant, that the transition from the mundane to the divine may strike the reader with greater force. From the flock sniffing Its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle. the soliloquist of the poem calls us to follow him as he "flings out of the little chapel"; and with Section IV we have passed into the boundless waste of the common, where is A lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon ... risen [Which] would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the West. (ll. 185-189.) The scene thus outlined prepares us for the culmination of Section VI. For lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect. * * * * * * * * * * But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier,-- Rapture dying along its verge. (ll. 373-399.) So the poet leads us to the climax--to the silence awaiting the answer to the speaker's query Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge? (l. 400.) Then follow Sections VII and VIII, revealing the vision. The too-much glory, as it seemed, Passing from out me to the ground, Then palely serpentining round Into the dark with mazy error. * * * * * All at once I looked up with terror. He was there. He himself with his human air. On the narrow pathway, just before. But the writer keeps strictly within the bounds of reverence: I saw the back of him, no more. (ll. 424-432.)