The Secret Splendour

Pillar on massive pillar plunging down

 From some foundation of immobile sky—

Inverted temple of tranquillity, white

With secrets quarried out of constellate deeps—

An offering and a call from stirless heavens

To tremulous earth: "Behold this structure, bare

Of golden presence, waiting for some vast

Power to be shrined in its pure silences.

This holy void is the Infinite bowing low

To the sleep that is a locked Almightiness.

Wake, godhead greater than the unfallen spheres.

Turn the resplendent roof touching dull clay

A floor for thy small feet to trample stars!

Fill the descending pillars with the force

Of thy arousal: lift through them the Word

 Unknown to us but gemmed in the ancient dark

Where One above the azure hierarchies

 Sealed His eternal image—One who dared

 Self-death to unveil omnipotence in blind dust."

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