In all his life he had never experienced anything so real. He had, as the gaff entered his side, doubled up in utter pain, and Lurine, who had been ducking and dodging, had halted at once in concern for him.

The gaff—the metal barbed hook itself—came at the bottom end of a long pole, a spear, which ascended from Earth to heaven, and he had, in that awful instant as he tolled doubled up in agony, glimpsed the Persons at the top end of the spear, those who held the pole that bridged the two worlds. Three figures with warm but impassive eyes. They had not twisted the gaff within him; They had simply held it there until, in his pain, he had begun by slow and gradual degrees to become awake. That was the purpose of this sting: to wake him from his sleep, the sleep of all mankind, from which everyone would one day, in the twinkling of an eye, as Paul had said, be roused. “Behold,” Paul had said, “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but shall be changed, in the twinkling of an eye.” But oh, the pain. Did it take this much to awaken him? Must everyone suffer like this? Would the gaff pierce him again sometime? He dreaded it, and yet he recognized that the three figures, the Trinity, were right; this had to be done; he had to be roused! And yet—

He now got out a book, opened it, and read aloud to, Lurine, who liked to be read to if it wasn’t too long and declamatory. He read a small, simple poem, without telling her the author.

Closing the book, he asked, “What do you think of that?”

“ ‘Sokay.”

He said, “Sappho. Translated by Landor. Probably from one word, from a ‘fragment.’ But it reminds one of Gretchen am Spinnrade—in the first part of Goethe’s Faust.” And he thought, Meine Ruh ist hin. Mein Herz ist schwer. My peace is gone, my heart is heavy. Amazing, so much alike. Did Goethe know? The Sappho poem was better, being shorter. And it, at least as done by Landor, was in English, and he, unlike the SOWer Father Handy, did not delight in strange tongues; in fact he dreaded them. Too many ter-weps had come for example from Germany; he could not forget that.