Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk1.djvu/129

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The Pilgrim's Progress.
125

Shep. Ay, and you will have need to use it when you have it too!

By this time the pilgrims had a desire to go forwards, and the Shepherds a desire they should; so they walked together towards the end of the mountains. Then said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here show the pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look through our perspective-glass. The pilgrims then lovingly accepted the motion; so they had them to the top of a high hill called Clear, and gave them the glass to look.

Then they tried to look, but the remembrance of that last thing that the Shepherds had shown them made their hands shake; by means of which impediment they could not look steadily through the glass; yet they thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the place. Then they went away, and sang this song:—

Thus by the Shepherds secrets are revealed,
Which from all other men are kept concealed;
Come to the Shepherds, then, if you would see
Things deep, things hid, and that mysterious be.

When they were about to depart, one of the Shepherds gave them a note of the way. Another of them bid them beware of the flatterer. The third bid them take heed that they slept not upon the Enchanted Ground. And the fourth hid them Godspeed. So I awoke from my dream.

And I slept, and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims going down the, mountains along the highway towards the city. Now, a little below these mountains, on the left hand, lieth the country of Conceit, from which country there comes into the way in which the pilgrims walked a little crooked lane. Here, therefore, they met with a very brisk lad that came out of that country, and