The boats are ranged in three great circles beneath us round the new Amaranth Vine. These ride on invisible sea-levels. They are not air ships with modern wings and propellers, but boats of the ancient type, such as were used by Hiram, King of Tyre, when he brought the wood to build the temple of Solomon, such as St. Peter used on Lake Galilee, such as bore St. Paul to the ends of the world. While the star chimes of the city ring new tunes, the weird sailors below us pour down a crimson wine from the sides of the boats, that mixes with the autumn leaves of the Amaranth Vine that swirl now between us and the whole towered city below. The wine and the leaves turn to crimson mist and crimson storm, filling the city canyons with rolling rivers of storm to the top of the Sunset Towers. The boats rise, sailing as though travelling of their own knowledge. Even those that are empty and have no prophet sailors in them are up and away. Some of them seem like exhalations from the perfume and gleam of the gigantic vine or from the light and mist of the city below. And so out to the stars scatter all these purposeful ships, some empty, some with prophet crews, and every boat has blazing at its masthead the red and white star of Springfield and Illinois. And the song goes up with them to the stars: “Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame.” Avanel says, “That song comes because the song and heart and blood of the proudest prophets from the proudest suns, are for the city that will receive them.” We let our ship blow and drift as it will. But it sweeps up and up, with the swiftness of light. In less time than it takes a flower to open, we are carried to the parapets of ancient Heaven. We find our great-leaved, heavy-fruited Amaranth Vine, climbing up over the closed gates and high wall-towers of Heaven and winding a long way into the old forest that has overgrown the streets. We find the new all conquering Springfield vine, spreading branches through the forest like a banyan tree. As this Amaranth from our little earthly village grows thicker, we see by its light a bit of what the ancient Heaven has been. And it is still a solid place of soil and rock and metal. Where the Springfield Amaranth blooms thickest, shedding luminous glory from the petals in the starlight, this Heaven is shown to be an autumn forest, yet with the cedars of Lebanon, and sandalwood thickets, and the million tropic trees whose seeds have blown here from strange zones of the planets, and whose patterns are not the patterns of those of our world. Among these, vine-clad pillars and walls are still standing, roofed palaces, so gigantic that, when our boat glides down the great streets between them, they overhang our masts. And from branches above us these strange manners of fruits tumble upon our decks for our feasting and delight. And there are beneath our ship, as it sails on as it will, little fields long cleared in the forest, where grows weedy ungathered grain.