The Secret Splendour

God is asleep!

The great eyes keep

No watch on us:

Love-luminous

Are they with the gleam

Of a magic dream

In which they behold

Man's heart a gold

Of deathless light:

Never they sight

The sobbing dark

We hark and hark

Within our breast.

Vainly we quest

Power from that glance

 Of lonely trance

To change our own

Life's trembling tone.

 O we must break

The trance awake

And free the dense

Omnipotence,

Making it know

The world is woe

And not the bliss

God's dream-abyss

Kindles to Him!

Until the gaze

Of God outblaze

To catch the dim

Misery below,

There can be no

 Earth-alchemy.

Prayer after prayer

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Must cleave the air,

An ocean-cry

To shake the sky:

All life must yearn

Without one stop:

Then suddenly

The high gold hue

Of eternity

Shall timeward drop

And God's dream turn

 Dazzlingly true!

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