A friend gave Neville a long poem by D. H. Lawrence, 'The New Heavens and Earth,' on the Monday night before this lecture. The friend, who had also known Aldous Huxley, described Lawrence as uniquely able to convey what it felt like to be a tree, an animal, or a wave. Neville reads the poem's account of dying and being restored to a renewed body as an illustration of the same resurrection theme he applies elsewhere in the lecture to his secretary Jack Butler.