The Secret Splendour

Surely in future ages some

Thinker will brood upon a theory

That my strange poet-passion of love has come

To worship an august philosophy

Whose intellectual rays

Of truth have woven all this dream of hair

Streaming in beauty from an angel face:

Else how could man give such ideal praise?

Was ever woman pure enough to bear

A mirrored paradise

Within the changeful glory of her eyes?

Poor sage! whose bloodless kin denied

Lips to the smile that Dante sighed

Through hollow years to see again—

Will you with your unpassioned abstract brain

Make clear how the august philosophy

Which I was song-allured to speak

By symbol of a white brow's majesty

Had one dark mole upon its rapturous cheek?...

That miracle you never shall explain,

For incorruptible truth has beckoned me

Not through a drudging wisdom but because

A woman's mouth breathed like a perfect rose

Deep-rooted in her soul's divinity!

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