I
OH, there are moments in man’s mortal years | |
| When for an instant that which long has lain | |
| Beyond our reach is on a sudden found | |
| In things of smallest compass, and we hold | |
| The unbounded shut in one small minute’s space, | 5 |
| And worlds within the hollow of our hand,— | |
| A world of music in one word of love, | |
| A world of love in one quick wordless look, | |
| A world of thought in one translucent phrase, | |
| A world of memory in one mournful chord, | 10 |
| A world of sorrow in one little song. | |
| Such moments are man’s holiest,—the divine | |
| And first-sown seeds of Love’s eternity. | |
| And such were those last moments when I sat | |
| Beside my long-lost friend, soft-laid again | 15 |
| In what no longer was his lair of death, | |
| But now his bed of glory. Life, all life, | |
| Its terrors and its tumults and its tears, | |
| Its hopes, its agonies and its ecstasies, | |
| Its nights of sorrow and its dawns of joy, | 20 |
| Its visionary raptures and its dull | |
| Death-darkened hours, its longings, losses, gains, | |
| Curses and cries and lamentations loud, | |
| Sins, frenzies, and despairs, the monstrous births | |
| Of thought and action groping for the light, | 25 |
| The false, the true, the night’s red underworld | |
| Of nadir darkness, and the zenith stars | |
| Lost in their spheral music beating time | |
| To every heart that hates or loves or mourns,— | |
| These now were one, and I was one with these, | 30 |
| And these with me through Love’s transfusing power | |
| That passed upon me then. There as we sat,— | |
| My brother and I, my brother made anew, | |
| My brother thrice made mine, for ever mine, | |
| Made one and equal with me through Love’s might,— | 35 |
| We felt all space was ours, all time was ours; | |
| We were as those that reign above the worlds; | |
| And in our souls we saw the light round which | |
| All multiformal things grow uniform, | |
| The many sing as one. And we were one, | 40 |
| Calm-seated in the heaven that overflows | |
| With the world’s music of perpetual peace. | |
| |
II
And then I thought that He whom we name God | |
| Was not perhaps some unit of cold thought | |
| Such as Greek sages gave to Christian saints, | 45 |
| A primal number, lone, creationless; | |
| But now He came to me, as oft before, | |
| The everlasting Twofold, ever one, | |
| The man and woman still inseparable. | |
| And as the absolute can never live | 50 |
| Without its relative; as silent space | |
| Knows nothing, never sees or hears itself | |
| Without time’s measuring music; as cold form | |
| Lies blind and blank till colour comes with kiss | |
| And warmth outpoured upon it, such as once | 55 |
| Elisha poured upon the lifeless child,— | |
| So God was now no longer unto me | |
| A lonely masculine might above the worlds, | |
| But as the man and woman, twofold life, | |
| Its married Law and Love, and these were one. | 60 |
| And from their wedded love sprang forth a child, | |
| Their first-begotten-son, whose name was Love,— | |
| Love their great heir, the lord of life and death, | |
| The holder of the keys to all we know | |
| And all the secrets of the unsearchable, | 65 |
| The chalice-bearer of the world’s life-wine, | |
| Bringer of light and steersman of the stars. | |
