 | The Creed of My Heart and Other Poems |  |
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BEAUTY AND LOVE
I
What does it mean that, when the mornWith pure cold passion faintly glows,
My heart responds with yearning throes
Prophetic of a life unborn?
II
Or what, that, when the crimson WestSends to the zenith clouds of flame,
A fire which life can never tame
Leaps up, rekindled in my breast?
III
What does it mean that when the springReturns with leaf and flower and bud,
Her quickening impulse thrills my blood,
And in my heart her sweet birds sing?
IV
What does it mean that, when the seaWith gently heaving bosom sleeps,
My soul draws from her moonlit deeps
Their passionate serenity?
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V
What means it that, when Ocean raves,Storm-tortured, round the streaming rocks,
In me reverberate the shocks,
Far-thundered, of his baffled waves?
VI
Or what, that when the silent nightWith stars innumerable shines,
My prisoned spirit ever pines
To wander through those fields of light?
VII
What does the mystic kinship meanThat links the life of outward things
To this deep love, whose fountain springs
Within me from some source unseen?
VIII
What does it mean? I cannot tell:Or, if I can, my lips are sealed;
For too much brightness is the shield
Of its own light. Yet once it fell
IX
That of a sudden there was wrought,Across the darkness of my soul,
A sinuous flash, a flaming scroll,
Of world-illuminating thought.
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X
And then I saw or seemed to see—Ere yet the night resumed its reign
With tenfold gloom—that not in vain
Do Nature's chords vibrate in me;—
XI
That God, the One Eternal Life,Whose love sustains all Heaven and Earth,
Whose pulses beat from death to birth,
Whose peace controls our whirling strife,—
XII
That God, with sudden glad surprise,Sees through the rapture of my heart,
Sees through the tears of joy that start
Unbidden to my gazing eyes,—
XIII
Sees in the grandeur and the graceDiffused through all things, near and far,
From quivering leaf to throbbing star,
The light of his own glorious face;—
14
Sees his own beauty burning throughThis film of outward loveliness,
These luminous clouds which half confess
The radiance that they veil from view;—
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XV
Sees it, and glows with love divine,Glows through my heart in golden gleams,
Glows through its beauty-haunted dreams,
Glows till its life is God's, not mine.
XVI
All this in that one scroll of lightI seemed to read: then, ere it came,
Far off had flashed the blinding flame,
Leaving behind a deeper night.
XVII
Yet still one faith outsoars all doubt,—That all things outward are my kin;
That their true life is here within;
That my true life is there without:
XVIII
That what I feel and what I seeAre one at last—one living whole;
That love is beauty's inmost soul,
And beauty love's epiphany.
| The Creed of My Heart and Other Poems | |