A Gift of Grace   These simple little gifts of Grace I put down only for Your sake; For passing Time will soon efface The memory of me and break To dust the heart that thrilled to You, The brain Your presence.made so bright, And Silence flood out through and through These vibrant pathways of delight.   Of nought will stay the faintest trace; Nothing remains and all falls still; Only this little gift of Grace May praise You — if it is Your Will. Page-98

The Player   Keep your head, my heart, my heart, Keep your head; If you muddle through your part, You'll soon be dead.   If you bungle all your task, Day after day, Tossing off your painful mask, Who'll play the play?   Grant this much to Him who thought Playing such fun; Pretend to be what you are not — For 'tis all one. Page-40

Part Two Page-75

Sudden Change   The heart sits blank in utter darkness Through days and nights of idiocy, Lonely and still, a vacant desert, A stone's insensibility...   When sudden through the self's vast spaces The shining worlds begin to move, Trailing their moons and starry graces Across the fields of heavenly love;   And suddenly the inner deeps Vault outward to infinity, And all the far blue heaven leaps And merges in the heart's wide sea. Page-135

All is You   Radiant beyond the gold of kings Your lovelinesses shine, O Queen of the secret heart of things, O Mother-Love divine.   The splendour closes over my sight, Upon my brow your kiss Opens the inner worlds of light Where all is vibrant bliss.   All things dissolve to ecstasy; The being drawn above Widens to your infinity, Lifted in hands of love.   All calm, all peace, the mind's blue deep Illumined lies in trance, Within an endless glowing sleep, A vast deliverance.   All, all is You: the heart's white flame With your love burning bright, Lips honey-sealed with your sweet name, Flesh

You Alone   Dearest, it is always the same: Through every minute of the day You come: your voice, your words, your Name, In everything I hear or say.   And everywhere, and every time, It's You; strange faces in the streets Are You, strange words within my rhyme With unknown purpose count your beats.   Why do You haunt me, taunt me so? Must every thought I think be split To gather You, before it grow True and whole in the infinite?   I wrap my cracking wits with care In words grown unecstatic, sane; I fold You in, all unaware, Until You learn to share my pain...   O dearest, make me understand This in

And Why?   You tell me you deceive, the more to grow In joy of love, more wholly, deeply one; What reason's this? You've veiled your Presence's sun And flung the night upon me, black with woe. What is your Will, your game, I do not know; The darkness thickens round me, dank and dun, No more through me your sweet bright waters run, And long extinguished is the heart's white glow.   And why, and why? I ask again, again. Do you not sense how hard it is for me? How long must I endure? or must I see You even in this night, here feel you close And warm and beautiful midst this sharp pain, And this dark world your rapture's radiant r

Storm   After the beauty of your peace, The rapture of your storm; Your myriad joys and agonies Of colour, light and form:   Swiftness and strength and sudden doom  Upon earth's tortured pain, Straightening lightnings that ungloom  The chambers of the brain.   Dance of the rain-drops in each cell, Translucent, naked, pure; Clean wind-washes which dispel The crowded dreams of yore.   Heaving seas of passionate flame Refining clotted dust,  Etching silently your name Upon the rocks of trust.   And, at last, the heavens warm Of sparkling purities: After the beauty of your storm, The rapture of your peace.

Soul   You who come now through the darkness, Long ways of night and dream and death, Wading through the mud of sorrow, Towards the heaven's fragrant breath;   You, beloved of the Highest,  White child of the eternal Fire, What have you to do with clingings, With trammels of the earth's desire?   Leap and free yourself from bondage, Nor pause nor rest till all be done; Till your heart's gold pureness glimmer, Enrapt within the Beauteous Sun. Page-39

Epiphany   Behold, the Timeless now through all Time shines, Resplendent in each thought and act and thing; The earth and heavens with His Presence ring, And every form enfolds Him in its lines. All grows to wondrous beauty, shapes and signs Reveal the Light's mysterious fashioning, From rock and rock the solar waters spring, The sun-gold flood no earth-born strength confines.   Once long ago seers spoke of alchemy, The mystic stone that can transmute to gold, The mystic wine of life. Now in this hour Of benedictions, hour eternal, we Witness fulfilled the promises of old, The glory of Love's sacrificial power. Page-174