No personal! No God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne,
Deep in a golden glory,—whence he nods
Man this or that,—and little more than man!
Thus I divine Him: When the soul, refined
Through love and wisdom through a thousand years,
Shall mount as pure intelligence and pierce
The separate cycles singing under God,—
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
Of wild electric splendor,—it shall see
(Through God-propinquity become a god)
Resplendencies of empyrean light
Swift-lightening out of spheric harmonies:
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of wild-rainbowed rays:
And in it—eyes: of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful:
And o’er the eyes, limpid, hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire:
Lips underneath of trembling ruby—lips,
Whose smile is light and each expression, song.
In multiplying myriads, forms of fire,
Cherubic faces of intensity,
Waiting His look, that is electric thought,
To work His will, spirits on spirits stand
Circling the Unit, God: Supremity
Creative and eternal.
And from Him
Man’s intellect, detached, expelled and breathed
Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul,—
One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay,—
Is given to Earth for something more than earth,
Some purpose, some divine development,—
That protoplasmic evolution proves,—
That lifts him upward, heart and soul and mind,
From matter to ideal potencies,
Up to the source and fountain of all mind,
Beauty and truth and everlasting love,
To be resumed and re-absorbed in them—
One more expression of Eternity.
DISENCHANTMENT OF DEATH
Hush! she is dead. Tread gently as the light
Steals in the weary room. Thou shalt behold.
Look:—in death’s ermine pomp of awful white,
Pale passion of pulseless slumber, very cold,
Her beautiful youth!—Proud as heroic might,—
Brought low by him whose touch is shadow and mold.
Old earth she is now: energy of birth
Hath fledged glad wings and tried them suddenly:
The eyes that held have freed their maiden mirth:
The spark of spirit, which made this to be,
Shines in some fairer star than this of Earth,
Some Fairy-star of far eternity.
A sod is this; whence, what were once those eyes,
Will grow blue wildflowers in some happier air!
Some weed with flossy blossoms will surprise,
Haply, some summer with her affluent hair!
Some rose reveal her cheeks: and the wise skies
Will clasp her beauty in some young tree there.
The chastity of death hath filled her so
No dreams of life may reach her in her rest;
No dreams the heart exhausted here below,
Hopes built within the romance of her breast.
Now she will sleep, like music, silent, slow,—
That wakes the buds, to golden life caressed.
The winds of spring, that whisper to the grass;
The rain, that sets the red roots harping; sound,
And gleam and color of the dews that glass
Globes of concentric beauty on the ground;
Shall hint of her; and she herself shall pass,
Like prayer, into each flower with memory crowned.
So, though she’s dead, you see she is not dead:
All things are vocal of her: lost in sleep
She lies: its narrow house the soul hath fled;
Her soul, still near us, haply; while the deep
Remains unvoyaged: waiting to be led
It still delays, held here by us who weep.