The Secret Splendour

Far flute throbbing across earth s somnolence,

What Yogi's rapture trembles in your call?

What sanctities has your dream-vigil known

While the vague deepening shadow falls immense

On eve's dim echoes of the sunken day

Ere the cold stars emerge?

What visionary urge

Has stolen from horizons watch id alone

Into your being like a fathomless smile,

That you can thus enisle

With slow prolonged miraculous rise and fall

Of liquid melody my darkening sense?

...Or else perhaps a village boy who bends

Homeward his steps beneath the drowsy sway

Of palms, hears the familiar instrument

Wake to strange potence in his wondering hands

Till all the air is tremulously rent

By wizardries of incorporeal tone,

Because for one brief moment, sweet, intense,

Into his thought the immortal legend strayed

Of how Lord Krishna once the flute had played

And made its simple heart of song His own!

...Whatever unknown lips' mellifluence

Be here, it's ecstasy to me; nor less,

When on his lonely path the charmer's gone

And from the shadows wavering with the breeze

The last gleam fades of all that passionate peace,

The music that has been.

For in its wake unearthly tenderness

Lingers, as though a press

Of benediction lay on me unseen

And love spoke to my heavenward groping mood

Out of the night's inhuman vastitude.

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