The Secret Splendour

Turn Your Back

Turn your back on everything

Utterly—

There's no other way to wing

Infinity.

Spirit's grandeur cannot brook

Compromise—

Once for all you must surrender

To the skies.

But when all earth fades behind

Soul's firm back,

It has not become for soul

One huge black.

By a magic most divine,

Things we spurn

 For the sake of Spirit's ether

Always turn

Part of the same mystery

That we quest,

 But within that near Unknown

None can rest:

O this Wonder will not tear

Its wide veil

Ere we first in the beyond

Learn to hail

The one Marvel which shall give

Soul release:

 We must fly afar from little

Poignancies,

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Merge in quiets that are never

Bound by birth,

 Then with eyes of dreaming distance

Look on earth:

Like a many-mooded mirror

Time shall be,

And in each hour's hue shall wake

Eternity!

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