The Sehnsucht in Elizabeth Goudge

I knew already that Elizabeth Goudge was a person who knew die Sehnsucht, from the details she chose to describe so far in The Dean's Watch, and then I read this:

Until now life for him had meant the aridity of earthly duty and the dews of God. Now he was aware of something else, a world that was neither earth nor heaven, a heartbreaking, fabulous, lovely world where the conies take refuge in the rainbow hills and in the deep valleys of the unicorns the songs are sung that men hear in dreams, the world that the poets know and the men who make music … The autumn song of the robin could let you in, or a shower of rain or a hobby-horse lying on a green lawn.

She's been pierced by the longing. Though I would argue it's actually heaven breaking into earth, or perhaps echoes of the garden of Eden before the fall ...

The robin in this photo is hidden in the side of Millais' painting of Ophelia.