Notebook Fragment
[Notebook 22, British Library Add. ms 47,520]*

The Child is born, the Child must die / Among the desert Sands / And we too all must die of Thirst / for not a Drop remains. But wither do we retire / to Heaven or possibility of Heaven / But this to darkness, Cold, & tho' not positive Torment, yet positive Evil—Eternal Absence from Communion with the Creator. O how often have the Sands at night roar'd & whitened[1] like a burst of of [sic] waters / O that indeed they were! Then full of enthusiastic faith kneels & prays, & in holy frenzy covers the child with sand. In the name of the Father &c &c / —Twas done / the Infant died / the blessed Sand retired, each particle to itself, conglomerating, & shrinking from the profane sand / the Sands shrank away from it, & left a pit / still hardening & hardening, at length shot up a fountain large & mighty

[? How][2] wide around its Spray, the rain-bow plays upon the Stream & the Spray—but lo! another brighter, O far far more bright / it hangs over the head of a glorious Child like a floating veil (vide Raphael's God)[3]—the Soul arises they drink, & fill their Skins, & depart rejoicing—O Blessed the day when that good man & all his Company came to Heaven Gate & the Child—then an angel—rushed out to receive them—