The Secret Splendour

THE SECRET SPLENDOUR

Tree of Time

I am a tree of time, a swaying shadow.

With one sole branch lit by eternity—

All of me dark save this song-fruitful hand.

There the large splendour tunes my blood and makes

Fragments of deathless ecstasy outflower;

And I but live in these few fingers that trace

On life's uncoloured air a burning cry

From God-abysses to God-pinnacles.

Some day the buried vast which holds me rooted

In dreamful kinship to the height of heaven

Shall wake: then through each quivering nerve shall course

No feeble brightness self-consumed in joy

Like the brief passions of earth, but nectar-flame—

A Force drunk with its own infinitude.

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