The Secret Splendour

Beneath, Above

My dawn's first glimpse, the last glimpse of my night

is a small window framing one slim tree,

The mid-trunk visible, a groping brown,

The top and base a secret to my sight.

One pace from bed, in the morning of the mind

Or in the heart's nocturnal glimmer and grey.

Shows me the stem below, the leaves on high,

A birth in clay, in void air a long search.

But there's a cry from some great window lost:

 "Look not for truth without truth lives within!"...

Across the lonely strangenesses of sleep

Looms a far vision that is night nor day:

Between my drowse and my awakening,

 The tree is an Omniscience at blind play—

Not from beneath but from above it grows.

The murmurous leaves a power of green gloom

 Hurled downward for new self-discovery,

 The roots a rapture sucking the infinite sky!

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