The Secret Splendour

O Heart..."

"O heart that would be saint,

How will you wash the taint

Of your own blood?

Before the child eyes knew

A light between their lids.

Some ancient fire threw

Hell's heat into this flood

And woke to unsleeping lust

Each atom of the dust.

"Where can you fly O heart,

 From your own throb?

Even if you mount the sun's cart

And watch the gold wheels turn,

Still must you live with that red

 Shouting or russet sob."

But the heart knows strange depths

And why its cry was born—

The meaning of the colour

It took from Creation's morn.

Within its narrow room

Infinities are heard.

Did not the Holy Ghost

Come over a woman's lust

And from the mouth of the womb

Break forth the immaculate Word?

Powers that are more old

Than the dust have gone to mould

The flesh: in the blood's din

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Is the voice that Augustine

Caught speaking to eternity:

"Thou hast made us for Thyself,

And in our breast

Can be no rest

Till the heart rests in Thee."

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