The Secret Splendour

Deep after deep is your heart's home, O flower, O flame!

Height over height is home to your heart, O flame,

O flower!

May never the intimate gold of your earth-loved name

 Blur to my gaze the ineffable dream I knew in that hour

When to my pilgrim-path the fire and fragrance came,

A girl whose eyes were distances grown warm and

 close and dear,

Whose mouth was an ancient mystery in a cave made

silent-sweet,

Whose hands held forth ten tapers shining as if to clear

Glooms of each lonely soul with a touch of human heat

Yet burning upward in their beauty of inmost quiver and call

Through an infinite space that shrined forever the

unseen All....

And if your body of passion and peace should stumble

at times to a fall,

O let me remember that even this fall may kiss the

Eternal's feet!

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