The parchment was discoloured with age, and one leaf showed a dark stain over two-thirds of it.

He slowly turned this also, and seemed looking for a certain passage in what appeared a continuous poem.

Somewhere about the middle of the book he began to read.
But what follows represents--not what he read, only the impression it made upon me.

The poem seemed in a language I had never before heard, which yet I understood perfectly, although I could not write the words, or give their meaning save in poor approximation.

These fragments, then, are the shapes which those he read have finally taken in passing again through my brain:-- "But if I found a man that could believe In what he saw not, felt not, and yet knew, From him I should take substance, and receive Firmness and form relate to touch and view; Then should I clothe me in the likeness true Of that idea where his soul did cleave!" He turned a leaf and read again:-- "In me was every woman.