A Persian parable Neville tells for the difference between report and experience. Two moths are sent by their king to investigate the nature of a flame, because the flame is to a moth its god; they come back with uncertain intelligence - one thought it was warm, the other thought it was bright - and they do not agree. The third moth goes, moved by true desire, folds his wings beneath him and plunges headlong into the sacred fire until he becomes one colour and one substance with the flame: he only knew the flame who in it burned, and only he could tell who ne’er to tell returned. THE VARIATION IS THE INTERESTING PART, because Neville uses the same poem to make opposite points about return. At 1777 the third moth is absorbed and cannot return any more - he rose as Christ Jesus, could not discuss it on the level of the moth, became the flame and rose as the light of the world. At 1909 he takes the exception for himself: unlike this flame, you do return, I return - he plunged headlong into the sacred flame when he saw it and knew it to be himself, without hesitating for an nth part of a second, went up in serpentine form into Zion, and has returned to tell it. That is his standing claim about his own position, and here the poem is the vehicle for it.