The Secret Splendour

Night in the Open

Darkness once more!—enveloping tired despair

 Not with dull sleep but wide magnificence

Of silent beauty half-revealed, remote.

The dusty narrow ways are now forgot:

Each moment seems an everlasting eye

 Of imperturbable omnipotence

Wherein towards an unimagined goal

Vast purposes move, glimmering, out of sight.

Plunged in deep gloom the flesh lies unaware

Of its own being, while the voiceless soul,

The little flame that struggled through daylight

In ghostly passion mocked by clamorous glare,

Feeds on the circumambient mystery

And grows august, articulate, immense—

A myriad tongues ablaze with ecstasy!

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