The radiants carried them away, and I saw them no more.
"Ah!" said the mighty angel, continuing his descent to meet us who were now almost at the gate and within hearing of his words, "this is well! these are soldiers to take heaven itself by storm!--I hear of a horde of black bats on the frontiers: these will make short work with such!" Seeing the horse and the elephants clambering up behind us-- "Take those animals to the royal stables," he added; "there tend them; then turn them into the king's forest." "Welcome home!" he said to us, bending low with the sweetest smile.
Immediately he turned and led the way higher.

The scales of his armour flashed like flakes of lightning.
Thought cannot form itself to tell what I felt, thus received by the officers of heaven***.

All I wanted and knew not, must be on its way to me! We stood for a moment at the gate whence issued roaring the radiant river.

I know not whence came the stones that fashioned it, but among them I saw the prototypes of all the gems I had loved on earth--far more beautiful than they, for these were living stones--such in which I saw, not the intent alone, but the intender too; not the idea alone, but the imbodier present, the operant outsender: nothing in this kingdom was dead; nothing was mere; nothing only a thing.
We went up through the city and passed out.

There was no wall on the upper side, but a huge pile of broken rocks, upsloping like the moraine of an eternal glacier; and through the openings between the rocks, the river came billowing out.