O thou inspired by a far effulgence,

Adored of some distant Sun gold-bright,

O luminous face on the edge of darkness

Agleam with strange and viewless light!

A spark from thy vision’s scintillations

Has kindled the earth to passionate dreams,

And the gloom of ages sinks defeated

By the revel and splendour of thy beams.

In this little courtyard Earth thy rivers

Have made to bloom heaven’s many-rayed flowers,

And, throned on thy lion meditation,

Thou slayest with a sign the Titan powers.

Thou art rapt in unsleeping adoration

And a thousand thorn-wounds are forgot;

Thy hunger is for the unseizable,

And for thee the near and sure are not.

Thy mind is affianced to lonely seeking,

And it puts by the joy these poor worlds hoard,

And to house a cry of infinite dreaming

Thy lips repeat the formless Word.

O beautiful, blest, immaculate,

My heart falls down at thy feet of sheen,

O Huntress of the Impossible,

O Priestess of the light unseen!

 

PHOTO ID: 09258