"In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek,"
—and the padding of the feet is heard again.
Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain attempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God has been too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vain endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last.
"Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee.
I am defenceless utterly."
So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, he remembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when
"In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me,"
and,
"The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist."
All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God.
There follows a protest against those demands. To him it appears that they are the call for sheer sacrifice and death. He had sought self-realisation in every lovely field that lay open to the earth. But now the trumpeter is sounding, "from the hid battlements of Eternity," the last word and final meaning of human life. His is a dread figure, "enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned." His demand is for death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the green earth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God.