Then came a certain thing.
Are intimations for the elected soul
Dubious, obscure, of unauthentic power
Since ghostly to the intellectual eye,
Shapeless to thinking? Nay, but are not we
Servile to words and an usurping brain,
Infidels of our own high mysteries,
Until the senses thicken and lose the world,
Until the imprisoned soul forgets to see,
And spreads blind fingers forth to reach the day,
Which once drank light, and fed on angels’ food?
It happened swiftly, came and straight was gone.
One standing on some aery balcony
And looking down upon a swarming crowd
Sees one man beckon to him with finger-tip
While eyes meet eyes; he turns and looks again—
The man is lost, and the crowd sways and swarms.
Shall such an one say “Thus ’tis proved a dream,
And no hand beckoned, no eyes met my own?”
Neither can I say this. There was a hint,
A thrill, a summons faint yet absolute,
Which ran across the West; the sky was touch’d,
And failed not to respond. Does a hand pass
Lightly across your hair? you feel it pass
Not half so heavy as a cobweb’s weight,
Although you never stir; so felt the sky
Not unaware of the Presence, so my soul
Scarce less aware. And if I cannot say
The meaning and monition, words are weak
Which will not paint the small wing of a moth,
Nor bear a subtile odour to the brain,
And much less serve the soul in her large needs.
I cannot tell the meaning, but a change
Was wrought in me; it was not the one man
Who come to the luminous window to gaze forth,
And who moved back into the darkened room
With awe upon his heart and tender hope;
From some deep well of life tears rose; the throng
Of dusty cares, hopes, pleasures, prides fell off,
And from a sacred solitude I gazed
Deep, deep into the liquid eyes of Life.
SUNSETS
Did your eyes watch the mystic sunset splendours
Through evenings of old summers, slow of parting,—
Wistful while loveliest gains and fair surrenders
Hallow’d the West,—till tremulous tears came starting?
Did your soul wing her way on noiseless pinion
Through lucid fields of air, and penetrated
With light and silence roam the wide dominion
Where Day and Dusk embrace,—serene, unmated?
And they are past the shining hours and tender,
And snows are fallen between, and winds are driven?
Nay, for I find across your face the splendour,
And in your wings the central winds of heaven.
They reach me, those lost sunsets. Undivining
Your own high mysteries you pause and ponder;
See, in my eyes the vanished light is shining,
Feel, through what spaces of clear heaven I wander!