University of Virginia Library


130

II

Breathless and unforeseen, it comes!—the hour
When, on the breast of the Beloved, we feel
Almost the secret sense of life reveal
Its meaning, and the source of life its power;—
When, as in some vast sunrise, like a flower,
Our soul stands open and our eyes unseal,
While all that fear and ignorance conceal
Seems in perfection life's predestined dower.
Then, as it were against the inward ear,
We hold in silence, like a chambered shell,
The dazed one human heart ... and seem to hear
Forever and forever rise and swell
And fail and fall on Death's eventual shore,
Tragic and vast, life's inarticulate roar! ...