The Secret Splendour

Dawn

How earth-strange on the ethereal way

Travels the first wing-carillon

 A-tremble with the silver dawn

Ere rush of golden day!

Across slow-widening brightness, still

A dim-disclosured seerecy,

Quivers the foliage-tracery

Apart, inscrutable.

As though their breath was made divine

 By dew of contemplative hours,

There hangs like aura round the flowers

A nameless shadow-shine.

The heart, a hovering consciousness,

Thrills on some paradisal verge

As if awakening to merge

 With beauty sorrowless.

Familiar hues are yet unborn,

 A veil half-hiding them lays bare,

Shimmering through the mystic air,

An alchemy of morn,

Wherein the sense of earthly eyes

If soul could only learn to steep,

Out of the human dross of sleep

 A golden god would rise!

Page 51