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 pleasure, to the bliss

Whose utter sky the utter abyss

Wagered to mirror and manifest.

That flaming finger can attest

The paradox of eternity,

The endless smile that knows no sigh,

Yet in the peace and plenitude

Keeps every sting of the restless mood.

The ethers of Perfection are

No loss of sight that strains afar.

Nothing those glories lack, yet bear

New wonders kindling everywhere

God is two colours of one light,

A heavenly hermaphrodite—

Calm husband, master of all life,

Radiant incalculable wife—

Magic caprice without a lull,

Joined to a wisdom ever full

With secret of each sudden flash

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Yet feeling the bright laughter-lash

As if the Unknown's epiphany

Could take the Unknown's self unaware!

Hush that is infinitely bare

Only to catch an infinite voice—

A love that thrills from here to there

With a hundred hearts of reverie

Though holding by a vast of space

All glimmering goals in one embrace—

A rose-break of dawn after dawn

Despite a sunflower's zenith poise

Of noon that never is withdrawn—

Burst of vermilion surprise

Even to gold omniscient eyes—

Such is the Godhead whose sublime

Fusion of two fires strokes of time

Have split to joys and miseries—

Such is the Godhead of our fears:

Treasuring short-lived smiles and tears,

We shun the grandeur-smite that hurls

Away small rubies and brief pearls!

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