The Adventure of the Apocalypse We deem the darkness and the throe True measure of each ecstasy's glow: Only the background of huge night Reveals our drama of delight. We are enamoured of each fall That high winds of the mountain's call May kiss the sweeter. How shall we Grave sorrowless divinity? Wanderer of gleam and gloom, man's orb Of vision never can absorb The adventure of the apocalypse— Until his passion inward dips Where hides, behind both dazzle and dark, Perfection's pygmy, the soul-spark Plunged in the abyss to grow by strange Cry of contraries, chequer and change Of pain and pleas

The Sleeper on the Serpent Eternal rest, the Almighty's deepest power— Unchanging Self that makes all beings one And draws together the uttermost extremes With never the smallest break in motionless peace— Sleeper on the serpent of infinity, The ever-still Lord of the universe Ruling all time from those gigantic coils That keep a single folded secrecy In which no past and future stretch away But the far tail lies gripped in the far mouth, A circled calm of packed omniscience! We toil to gain brief riches of repose Or tiny treasures of uncertain lore: Tranquillity here is wealth for ever full, Intense gold

Single Without a Second Breath of the boundless blue, Throb of the perfect gold, 'Poise of the peak that is purple, Green wideness rapture-rolled— Streak of new moon that trickles Some immortality, Trance-touch of stars like a love Whose depth no man can see— All these are felt by us, Our aching eyes are called To many a far wood-gloom Fairily waterfalled— Our trembling hand bares heaven With a tiny stroke of the brush, Or through the quill's faint quiver Eagles of ecstasy rush— Wonders are all about, Wonders well up within, A gurgle sweeter than any name, A deep unworded d

Initiation at Midnight Night's noon! Does mystery reveal a rent When the peak hour of sable loneliness Strikes on the tranquil space of the unseen? A bolt of superhuman secrecy Drops in my brain as if a veil were torn By that intensest point of Vigilling gloom! Has some dense word of power shot suddenly down Out of rapt overarching widenesses?— Word like a strange shut eye that views all things By brooding on some inward glow of truth, So dark and day of mortal sight are one To this omniscience that transcends our time— Word travelling through my body to the ground— Message of the high immense to the dumb de

Triumph is All I build Thee not on golden dreams Nor on the wide world's winsomeness: Deeper than all I set my love— A faith that is foundationless! Not only where Thy silver steps Twinkle a night of nenuphars, But everywhere I see Thy heaven: I love the night between the stars. O mine the smiling power to feel A secret sun with blinded eyes, And through a dreaming worship bear As benediction wintry skies. For ever in my heart I hear A time-beat of eternal bliss. White Omnipresence! where is fear? The mouth of hell can be Thy kiss. The whole world is my resting-place: Thy beauty is my mother

Height and Depth The Archangels burn before the Perfect Face— Lighting all deeds from the Omnipotent's gaze. With heads upon His breast the Seraphim Tune their whole lives to the heavenly heart of Him. The cherubs laugh within His lap and play On faultless harps their rhythms of night and day. What shall we mortals do? O ours to meet With worshipping brow the flowers of His feet! Keen are the raptures of the sky-born host, Raptures with not one glorioled reverie lost. We that have known the abyss of blinded birth, How can we share those vastitudes of mirth? Yet, through the passion of frail feet which stray, A p

I Bring a Song. . . Fingers of light fall on my vague heart-strings. They wake a tremble that glimmers and is gone. A little secrecy shines out in each tune, But in that shining moment is no end Of the power that falls and the passion that flies up. A small bird with seven colours on its throat Lifts on wide wings that are invisible With quivers of a rapture infra-red Rhyming to a wisdom ultra-violet. Those black fires merging in a mystic sky Bear in their beat a burthen of measureless bliss: Sounds that are wonder-vast with things undreamed Call to the ear from far beyond the eye. A music whose meanings never can be see

Europe Takes a Look A rove all time he towers . . . Voronoff Will ask: "How can the Omnipotent have no lust, When lust is the sole sign of potency?" Herr Freud will find the eternity in his eyes Haunted by memories of his mother's womb— And the oneness with the Ancient of Days An outrage dreamed upon his grandmother! Then Doctor Bates will say, "He blinks so well— Perfectly simple why he sees all truth!" And face-cream makers want his recipe Of the skin growing fairer with Light's touch. When rhythms like singing flames break from his mouth Even though his beard is chilled with age's snow, The Faculty of Science wonders

Saviour-Guide So many ways I had gone, Called by the hues Of a myriad thronging dreams That never could fuse. You showed the one white path; Treading its calm, all else I saw as a leap of sand Away from the magic wells That seem so faint and far Through the wandering haze Which now at last I know As the outward human gaze. Gone is the straining look; Blissfully blind With love of the Secret Crescent Whose vanishing point is the mind, I walk a pearly roadstead Beyond all drossy days— A curve to heaven drawn by That Silver Smile of Your face. Deep and more deep within, I am gui

The Two Languages O body, modern tongue swayed by thought's flicker, How shall you be the outbreak of God's fire Whose tones are an ancient mystery beyond thought, A luminous Sanskrit of the secret soul Breathing a windless vastitudes within— Singer and seer of the omnipresent dream Lost by the fickle light of the arguer mind ? To your many-mooded mutability Dead is the language of the timeless One, Which through wide harmonies of goldenness Steadily thrills with yet a single cry Echoing ecstatically everywhere! Can ever your fluctuant form facilely leaning To a hundred different lures and loves translate The so