The Secret Splendour

Revelation*

Where ghostlike gleamed the vanishing day

Against abysmal space,

And dumb, with orbless gaze,

Monsoon-hung loured the Himalay,

My mind essayed on stormy wings the universe to span.

I plunged a deep, aspiring eye

 Into the holy hue

Which twilight sprayed like dew

On the corolla of the sky,

And sought ethereal joys whose breath could

disembody man.

I crossed in dream unceasing Powers,

Their high and devious ways

Guarding some ultimate haze

Of infinite, immaculate hours

Whence fell the shadow of a Presence near yet seeming lost.

My mind grew numb, knew sight nor speech;

A vast simplicity

Rushed yearning out of me

With ever childlike lips to reach

A Mother's Face behind the mask of Awful Outermost.

1931

* a poem of 1926 recast.

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