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, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon’s self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colours chorded, Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white,— Above which intervened the night. 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. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc? He did see One emerging from the glory— VIII. All at once I looked up with terror. He was there, He himself with his human air, On the narrow pathway, just before. I saw the back of him, no more— He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face: only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognise. I felt terror, no surprise; My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound of the mighty fact. “I remember, he did say “Doubtless, that, to this world’s end, “Where two or three should meet and pray, “He would be in the midst, their friend; “Certainly he was there with them!” And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw his very vesture’s hem. Then rushed the blood black, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; And I hastened, cried out while I pressed To the salvation of the vest, “But not so, Lord! It cannot be “That thou, indeed, art leaving me— “Me, that have despised thy friends!” The confession of his sin in despising _His_ friends in the little chapel is speedily followed by a gracious token of forgiveness:— IX. * * * * * The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,— Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discoloured web— So lay I, saturate with brightness.