In “The Gospel According To Thomas,” Jesus is asked where the kingdom of Heaven is and he replies that the kingdom of Heaven is here on earth but man does not see it. In reading “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” I was reminded of this in particular with stanza five: “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” We are born complete and whole; our knowledge of this fact becomes a fading memory as we age. Woodsworth can remember having the experience, but not the experience itself. If “Heaven lies about us in our infancy” and later in life, as Woodsworth says in the last half of stanza one: “Turn whereoe’er I may, by night or day, the things I have seen I now can see no more”, what happened? Should we be so presumptuous to assume that it is Heaven that changes and becomes invisible to our senses? Or could it be that it is man’s perception of immortality dims, leaving a vague unease in its place? I believe this was Woodsworth’s lament, like lying awake with an answer to a question tickling the edges of consciousness, so close to grasping yet forever out of reach.