The Secret Splendour

First Phase

Dumb echo of the Mother-mystery

Beyond the light of birth—

 Darkness divine, enveloping weary earth

In vast felicity

With your impartial sense-dissolving hue

 And slow cool sacred miracle of dew!

Solemn perfection, stay

Your lofty season, lest the dawn disperse

Too soon this indivisible universe

Of calm and from your star-impregnate womb

Of paradisal gloom

 I issue into the heart-searing day!

Second Phase

Foretaste of the death-sombre Destiny

Whose far-eyed grace

Haunts the child-dream of passionate pain

Storming through time to fathom yet again

The wondrous in-world whence life, wailing, strays!

Ineffable power,

 Drunk with your lonely dim prophetic mood

My flesh wears like an aureole

The beauty of the unborn hour

When with immeasurable quietude

Eternity

Shall quench the futile wanderlust of my soul!

7.6.32

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