The Secret Splendour

Your little passions tire me—-I would clasp

A huge magnificent futility

To heart, rather than with brief rapture grasp

A mote of sure success. A whole wide sky,

Impossible with lone God-reverie

No thought has compassed and no will subdued,

Shall hold in agelong pain of ecstasy

My drunk desire! No less, for I have viewed,

Astir within my clay's engulfing sleep,

An alien astonishment of light!

Let me be merged with its unsoundable deep

 And mirror in futile farness the full height

Of a heaven barred for ever to my distress,

Rather than hoard life's happy littleness.

8.8.34

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