University of Virginia Library


133

XXXVIII. PERFECT REST

This gives me perfect rest,—this is my exceeding rapture.
Quite to forget myself, and my own thoughts, and capture
Some new sweet sense of thee.
To lose myself in thee. To watch, soul-pale and breathless,
The beauty that gleams forth, inevitably deathless:
To see nought else but this,—yet this to see.
I never knew the rest that God could give a poet
Till thee I saw, and now I never more can know it
Save when thou art with me.
It rests my whole deep soul past words and past all measure
And gives my weary heart unfathomable pleasure
To wonder and gaze, and gaze and wonder at thee.