The Adventure of the Apocalypse

Wondrous waking

If the whole cosmic utterance suddenly ceased,

The ocean's roar died down nor even came

The vague and wavering whisper of thin leaves,

The deepest slumber would be struck awake

By that immeasurable surprise of hush!

So too the gloom of ignorant mortal mind,

That ever-present sleep with open eyes,

Breaks under a vast pressure of potent peace

When all a sudden the multitudinous lure

Of transient things wafts never more its call

And the heart is left with fathomless secrecies.

Time washed in vast white waters of inwardness

Throbs through still space a cosmic chastity—

The universe moves divine with no desire,

Impelled by a truth in love with its own light,

Following no need but only a rapturous will

Flamed by God's vision of His myriad Self.

This is the world whose magic moods are we

In a wondrous waking to our soul's profound;

And, when we thrill there, clamourous common day

Vanishes or else lingers the ghost of a dream

Like one small fish haunting an infinite sea.

But whoso with a golden gurgle drowns

In eternity's pacific splendences

Makes of their dazzle a blinding sleep once more.

Bearing the new-found nectarous wakefulness

Like a cool aura clinging to our clay

We through the old eyes cleansed of ignorance

Must turn the intense inlook a God's outview,

Catch in the million lures of things that die

Flash after flash of an immortal fire

And, drawing from their fugitive strengths a stuff

Of brightness to build up a new life's core,

Hold in our heart the glamours of the dust

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Transfigured to a breakless beauty and power,

Innumerably faceted yet one,

A diamond of earth's divinity!

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