The Secret Splendour

Isis of the Black Veils

In veil on veil of silken gloom

She burns like a dark flame through the room.

Out of her whirling fantasy

Strange shadow-figures flash and flee:

A night-winged moth, a fierce blind rose,

A driving storm of sable snows!...

In a deeper rhythm cf impetuous dance

 Echoing her mournful countenance,

Her swaying shrouded limbs express

The death-heart of life's loveliness:

The abysmal void round mortal hours,

The awful silence that devours

With gaping mouth cf sombre sky

The soul's adorant anguished cry!...

Suddenly her ominous beauty swerves

 To a harmony of slow chaste curves,

 That, like a dream-halo around cloud-hills.

With a glimmer and a rumour fills

The intent wide wonder of the mind.

Her flying drapery's tenebrous wind

 Wearies and wavering falls to rest

Along calm earthward leaning breast

Of visionary motherhood

And her arm's entranced uplifting mood.

Now the diaphanous silk-glooms show

 Her inward mystery, white, aglow!

The sense of unappeasable tears

Fades from their desolate universe,

 As though across its terror shone

 A revelation of moon-dawn!

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