The boats are now above the field, and some of them have rested near the earth, and some of the prophets are standing round the tree. Among them is that wild ancient man Isaiah. He gathers the whole company of Springfield people who are there on the edges of the field. Then there join, from the invisible world, many of the long dead Saints of Springfield and many saints from other capitals of this land.
Isaiah speaks to us in words, such as he spoke to the Jews, when the earthly Jerusalem had fallen, but they are words that shall ever be new till the last millennium is achieved. He stretches forth his hand and blesses our kneeling company and, with the honey of this new Amaranth Flower still burning on his lips, like visible fire, he cries in a loud voice his old prophecies of the coming of the restored and redeemed Zion.
Avanel and I are now in our ship above the town, and looking down on the sea of dim fleets. Avanel whispers: “There are prophets in those boats from all the hermit caves and all the shrines in the moon and all the planets and all the suns. There are prophets that once walked the innermost streets of the far jungles of Heaven.
“Yet the song that comes up from that sea and shakes our sails is: ‘Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame,’ because the song and heart and blood of any prophet are for the city that will receive them.”
The boats are ranged in three great circles beneath us round the new Amaranth Vine. These ride on invisible sea-levels. They are not air ships with modern wings and propellers, but boats of the ancient type, such as were used by Hiram, King of Tyre, when he brought the wood to build the temple of Solomon, such as St. Peter used on Lake Galilee, such as bore St. Paul to the ends of the world.
While the star chimes of the city ring new tunes, the weird sailors below us pour down a crimson wine from the sides of the boats, that mixes with the autumn leaves of the Amaranth Vine that swirl now between us and the whole towered city below. The wine and the leaves turn to crimson mist and crimson storm, filling the city canyons with rolling rivers of storm to the top of the Sunset Towers.
The boats rise, sailing as though travelling of their own knowledge. Even those that are empty and have no prophet sailors in them are up and away. Some of them seem like exhalations from the perfume and gleam of the gigantic vine or from the light and mist of the city below. And so out to the stars scatter all these purposeful ships, some empty, some with prophet crews, and every boat has blazing at its masthead the red and white star of Springfield and Illinois.
And the song goes up with them to the stars: “Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame.” Avanel says, “That song comes because the song and heart and blood of the proudest prophets from the proudest suns, are for the city that will receive them.”
We let our ship blow and drift as it will. But it sweeps up and up, with the swiftness of light. In less time than it takes a flower to open, we are carried to the parapets of ancient Heaven. We find our great-leaved, heavy-fruited Amaranth Vine, climbing up over the closed gates and high wall-towers of Heaven and winding a long way into the old forest that has overgrown the streets. We find the new all conquering Springfield vine, spreading branches through the forest like a banyan tree.
As this Amaranth from our little earthly village grows thicker, we see by its light a bit of what the ancient Heaven has been. And it is still a solid place of soil and rock and metal. Where the Springfield Amaranth blooms thickest, shedding luminous glory from the petals in the starlight, this Heaven is shown to be an autumn forest, yet with the cedars of Lebanon, and sandalwood thickets, and the million tropic trees whose seeds have blown here from strange zones of the planets, and whose patterns are not the patterns of those of our world. Among these, vine-clad pillars and walls are still standing, roofed palaces, so gigantic that, when our boat glides down the great streets between them, they overhang our masts.