The Secret Splendour

She danced, a mournful wave below the dusk;

But with her human grief mingled a voice

Of universal sorrow, one great rose

Of light dissolving through the windy gloom

To a giant reverie upon the surge

And fall of her song-heart. Plumbless, she grew

In symbol-prayer the whole earth's futile beauty—

But so unbearable deep-churning a prayer

That, in strange answer to its aching wideness,

Out of her spirit's sea a rapture swayed

Into her body and for one poise-moment

All her enchanted shape was Aphrodite!...

Mortal again, she trembled; yet those limbs

Left the bare spaces perfumed with life's goal.

Page 39