The Secret Splendour

Ask not yourself: "How shall I climb God's steep?"

O not by reason rose that impassible hill

And reason shall not be its conqueror.

Only some animal hunger for he height,

Dreaming not of the path but of the goal,

A cry from the dazzled depth of a child-heart,

Can dare as in somnambulist ecstasy

The sheer face of the Superconscious Calm.

No look behind at the broadening abyss,

No scrutiny of the beetling rock above,

But a close clasping of ledge on small keen ledge,

A love that clings in blindness to the light

And feels in every inch of intimate crag

A foretaste of the all-fulfilling peak,

Till suddenly the hushed infinitudes

Halo the thought-transcending human head—

While wise men chattering faintly far below

Argue forever the unattainable!

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