O vanished Face beyond the reach-of thought!

Beauty the soul must love ere eyes can view!–

Shed lustre once again: have I not through

Forgetfulness of human faces sought,

Year on dark year, Thy memory divine?

The old alchemic touch of peace renew:

Within my meditations blinded hue

Thy aureate immortality enshrine!

Craving, O Vast, no lesser radiance,

I bare of all change-garb my reverie–

Pine-odorous sway, cloud-richnesses that rove,

Oceanic rapture’s royal resonance!

Shall not my tranced sacrificial love,

Stripped of the universe, grow one with Thee?

What deep dishonour that the soul should have

Its passion moulded by a moon of change

And all its massive purpose be a wave

Ruled by time’s gilded glamours that estrange

Being from its true goal of motionless

Eternity ecstatic and alone,

Poised in calm plenitudes of consciousness–

A sea unheard where spume nor spray is blown!

Be still, oceanic heart, withdraw thy sense

From fickle lure of outward fulgencies.

Clasp not in vain the myriad earth to appease

The hunger of thy God-profundities:

Not there but in self-rapturous suspense

Of all desire is thy omnipotence!

Why need I fear to merge in Him my heart?

Although the magic message of the moon

Be lost within Him, nor the starry rune

Nor day’s rich rhapsody have counterpart,

He is no solitary blinded swoon

Of infinite forgetfulness, a void

Where every throb of colour is destroyed

For those who with His potence dare commune.

If not a star can ope its glimmering eye

And moon-rays wither and the sun grows black

When He absorbs the soul it is not lack

Of light in Him; but all this splendoured sky

Fades to a phantom shrivelled, shadowy,

Before the conflagration of His ecstasy!

"Who knows the travail of my earthward vow

The self-subdued descension of my powers

For thee, O man!–my daily death that dowers

Life with immortal relish? Richly now

The rooted trance of my perfection flowers

Into strange-glowing rapturous agony

Of sacrificial fruit yearning to be

Plucked by the hungry hands of mortal hours!

Infinity was mine: enhaloed bliss:

Vistas of timeless truth! And yet I bore

In my heart’s pinnacled ecstatic core

A dream to join thy soul from the abyss.

Behold, at last I come thy love to gain–

Eternal music wearing lips of pain!"