The Secret Splendour

Dante on the Eve of the 'Divina Commedia'

Gloom-bird they call me—for I brood apart.

One with night's incommunicable mind,

All human frenzy quenched within my heart

By the haunting rapture of the vast dream-wind

That blows, star-fragrant, from eternity.

 Drunk with the Unknown, I wander mute and blind;

But not, O Beatrice, blind and mute to thee:

For ever across my inmost soul is flung

The vision of thy smile's virginity—

My very blood turns consecrated song,

An unappeasable mysterious surge

With thy moon-glory maddening its tongue!

O might I carry to the doomsday verge,

Filling all time with deathless harmony,

Thy name, fair Spirit that through the molten gurge

Of lava lusts kept fixed unchangeably

Thy guardian look till on my seared face shone

The constellated coolness of God's eye!

O thou whose liberating charm has drawn,

Uplifted into his native infinite,

 Out of my body's burning Babylon

The sense-enchained ethereal Israelite!—

Young saviour, holding in thy calm child-gaze

Heaven's truth, as in a lake of silent night

Blossom the lilies of celestial space!

Page 34