The Secret Splendour

Importune not the evanescent hour

To lend its beauty to your eloquence.

Barren your hope that its unstable power

Can permeate your fragile, earth-born phrase

With incorruptible magnificence!

To the soul's vision of unbodied Grace

Compel your eager artifice to submit;

For music that outsoars the murk of time

Needs vaster wings than brief, capricious joys.

 Curb the impulsive brain's fame-hungry wit,

The self-sufficient clang of facile rhyme,

The fitful, immature, fantastic mood!

 Make the deep spirit-within your sovereign poise—

Willing to wait in agelong quietude

 To hear but once the Everlasting Voice.

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