The Secret Splendour

Glimmerings*

My soul's deep glimmerings

Are a passionate mystery:

My eyes can never see

What colour sits and sings

Upon its hidden face;

For they can but behold

Its loveliness unfold

In all that charms their gaze

 When cast on outward things.

 Often I see it glow

In the rhythmic radiance

That coils a white suspense

Round waves that dimly flow

Towards the Occident

While the nocturnal track

Of the girdling Zodiac

Is wet with star-dew sprent

From skies across which blow

Wind-birds on wings of green

In whose enormous sweep

Unto the land of sleep

 I feel my soul has been!

For out of foam and mist

Wherewith past eves were fraught

Perchance my bra n was wrought

 To love—a rhapsodist—

Vague sorceries of sheen!

For I cannot escape

This dream which holds my mind

That I would be too blind

 To mark the gorgeous shape

Of what inflames my soul,

* A poem of 1926 revised.

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If never cloudy sails

 Fluttered through gleaming gales

 And white waves did not roll

Nor changeful lights undrape

Their coloured nudities

Within my spirit's zone!

My look is outward thrown

In tuneful sympathies

On every quivering haze

As if that gloom were kin

To a secrecy within,

Because of passioning clay's

 Pre-human memories....

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