The Secret Splendour

With a pen dipped in many-coloured mist

Yet reaching through the mauve and amethyst

 To the one blazing gold above all change,

 I'll write the scripture of the universe, strange

With the hidden heart of life's familiar things

And every page shall be a throne where kings

Made by that strangeness out of common clay

Shall sit awhile and go their purple way.

I'll not recount that I took birth; for when

There broke into the universe's ken

The atomical apocalypse of me

I did not know, though everyone could see,

That I was born; so I shall write that some

Mystery within the dark contracting womb

Brought me into earth's light—it was a Power

Both in my mother and myself—each hour

It works deep-seated all-where—-most perhaps

Within those burning drouths and glowing gaps

That never can be healed to slumbering cool

Content by a crowd, however beautiful,

Of small earth-joys. That Force of hidden breath

Aiming through every small desire's death

At some wide immortality with which

To make the future's sable depths God-rich

Has set me moving, willy-nilly, on

To that veiled Sun of superhuman dawn.

Perchance I'll never view the Blaze, though I

Feel in my flesh an eastward-brightening sky....

Page 519