University of Virginia Library

I

In darkness of the visionary night
This I beheld: Wide space and therein God,
God who in dual nature doth abide—
Love, and the Loved One, Power and Beauty's self;
Him even the spirit's eye might not transfix
But sidelong gazed, fainting before the light.
And forth from God did come,—with dreadful thrill,
And starry music like to million wires
That shiver with the breathings of the dawn,—
Creation, boundless, bodiless, unformed,
And white with trembling fire and light intense,
And outward pulsings like the boreal flame.
One mighty cloud it seemed, nor star, nor earth,
Or like a nameless growth of the under-seas;
Creation dumb, unconscious, yet alive
With some deep, inward passion unexprest,
And swift, concentric, never-ceasing urge—
Resolving gradual to one disk of fire.
And as I looked, behold! the flying rim
Grew separate from the center; this again
Divided, and the whole still swift revolved,
Ring within ring, and fiery wheel in wheel;
Till, sudden or slow as chanced, the outmost edge
Whirled into fragments, each a separate sun,
With lesser globes attendant on its flight.
These while I gazed turned dark with smoldering fire
And, slow contracting, grew to solid orbs.
Then knew I that this planetary world,
Cradled in light, and curtained with the dawn
And starry eve, was born; tho' in itself
Complete and perfect all, yet but a part
And atom of the living universe.

II

Unconscious still the child of the conscious God—
Creation, born of Beauty and of Love,
Beauty the womb and mother of all worlds.
But soon with breathless speed the new-made earth
Swept near me where I watched the birth of things,
Its greatening bulk eclipsing, star by star,
Half the bright heavens. Then I beheld crawl forth
Upon the earth's cool crust most wondrous forms
Wherein were hid, in transmutation strange,
Sparks of the ancient, never-ending fire;
Shapes moved not solely by exterior law
But having will and motion of their own—
First sluggish and minute, then by degrees
Monstrous, enorm. Then other forms more fine
Streamed ceaseless on my sight, until at last,
Rising and turning its slow gaze about
Across the abysmal void, the mighty child
Of the supreme, divine Omnipotence—
Creation, born of God, by Him begot,
Conscious in Man, no longer blind and dumb,
Beheld and knew its father and its God.