Soon across the deep, dark waters
I will go to claim my own
From among the shining angels,
Where she waits for me alone.
We will part no more forever
Underneath that heavenly dome;
Love and joy shall reign together
In that bright eternal home.
But look—look!—there, there just before you. See! see it struggling to rise away. Oh, what wonderful transformation can this be!
As both neared the close, their bodies grew imperceptible, the web-woven words more and more brightly illuminated, and the haloing spirit larger, and larger, more and more distinct, yet more and more attenuated, until—no, no! it—but yes! I must believe it, must believe my eyes!—each took on the form of an angel! As the last word of each was woven, simultaneously, and as the low, faint, plaintive echoes of the music went trembling through the blue distance that still trembles in unison with the hearts of millions, the two meistersingers, perfect in angel form with a rarer beauty than I ever saw before, the rarest beauty I ever expect to see, shone radiantly in the night for a moment, like a glory struck out of darkness by a beam from heaven, and vanished like that glory passing out of darkness into heaven again. With my eyes following these disembodied embodiments of Beauty, and my palms out-reaching toward them, thus I sat until, when their passing glory at the same time closed the portals through which they vanished and gave the keys to memory, my nerves relaxed, the intense mingled pain and rapture, which had never ceased, seemed to snap my very heart-chords, and consciousness slid like lead into the lethean flow of the river of oblivion.