The hunchèd camels of the night [E] Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon. The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering. Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come! And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.
Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart! Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother? And thou—what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
"IN NO STRANGE LAND"
O World Invisible, we view thee, O World intangible, we touch thee, O World unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air— That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!— The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;— Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Genesareth, but Thames! [F]