We may be comforted for what we lose by what we gain; but that is not a recompense large enough to be divine: we want both.

Vaughan will be a child again.
For the movements of man's life are in spirals: we go back whence we came, ever returning on our former traces, only upon a higher level, on the next upward coil of the spiral, so that it is a going back and a going forward ever and both at once.

Life is, as it were, a constant repentance, or thinking of it again: the childhood of the kingdom takes the place of the childhood of the brain, but comprises all that was lovely in the former delight.

The heavenly children will subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, wax valiant in fight, rout the armies of the aliens, merry of heart as when in the nursery of this world they fought their fancied frigates, and defended their toy-battlements.
Here are the beginning and end of another of similar purport: CHILDHOOD.
I cannot reach it; and my striving eye Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
Were now that chronicle alive, Those white designs which children drive, And the thoughts of each harmless hour, With their content too in my power, Quickly would I make my path even, And by mere playing go to heaven.
* * * * * An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would God's face see; Which angels guard, and with it play-- Angels which foul men drive away.
How do I study now, and scan Thee more than e'er I studied man, And only see, through a long night, Thy edges and thy bordering light! O for thy centre and mid-day! For sure that is the narrow way! Many a true thought comes out by the help of a fancy or half-playful exercise of the thinking power.

There is a good deal of such fancy in the following poem, but in the end it rises to the height of the purest and best mysticism.