And all your glory, O most swift and sweet!—
And all your exultation only this;
To be the lowly and forgotten kiss
Beneath those feet.
You that must ever pass,—
You of the same wild way,—
The silver-bright good-bye without a look!—
You that would never stay,
For the beseeching grass …
Brook!—
You, Four Walls,
Wall not in my heart!
When the lovely night-time falls
All so welcomely,
Blinding, sweet hearth-fire,
Light of heart's desire,
Blind not, blind not me!
Unto them that weep apart,—
While you glow, within,
Wreckt, despairing kin,—
Dark with misery:
—Do not blind my heart!
You, close Heart!
Never hide from mine
Worlds that I divine
Through thy human dearness.
O belovèd Nearness,
Hallow all I understand
With thy hand-in-hand;—
All the lights I seek,
With thy cheek-to-cheek;
All the loveliness I loved apart.
You, heart's Home!—
Wall not in my heart.
CANTICLE OF THE BABE
I
Over the broken world, the dark gone by,
Horror of outcast darkness torn with wars;
And timeless agony
Of the white fire, heaped high by blinded Stars,
Unfaltering, unaghast;—
Out of the midmost Fire
At last,—at last,—
Cry! …
O darkness' one desire,—
O darkness, have you heard?—
Black Chaos, blindly striving towards the Word?
—The Cry!
Behold thy conqueror, Death!
Behold, behold from whom
It flutters forth, that triumph of First-Breath,
Victorious one that can but breathe and cling,—
This pulsing flower,—this weaker than a wing,
Halcyon thing!—
Cradled above unfathomable doom.