The Secret Splendour

What is Truth?

Agelong the query, "What is truth?"

To catch on an ecstatic tongue

The answer that keeps men ever young,

Men lose their youth!

Wrinkling and grey, we lapse to the ground—

 Eyes dim, mouth pale, hands helpless grown.

The answer that brings all rapture's tone

Is never found....

Never—until the eyelids drop.

 The mouth falls silent suddenly:

Alone the hands, a blind dumb cry,

Are lifted up,

As though to explore strange voids of sleep

Hanging beyond all universe,

Calm spaces no astronomer's

Long glass can sweep—

Invisible infinity

 Where dream, like perfect stars, the pure

 And vast originals of the unsure

 Time-throbs we see.

Waking in them a quiver of ruth

 Those hands of hushful prayer below

 Draw down to the heart a deathless glow—

And this is truth!

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