| THE SPIRIT grows the form for self-expression, | |
| And for a hall where she may hold high session | |
| With sister souls, who, allied with her, create | |
| Her fair companion, her espousèd mate. | |
| Ever the hidden Person will remould | 5 |
| For all our lives fresh organs manifold, | |
| Gross for the earthly, for the heavenly fine, | |
| Ethereal woof, wherein their graces shine. | |
| And there be secret avenues, with doors | |
| Yielding access to inmost chamber floors | 10 |
| Of the soul’s privacy; all varying frames, | |
| Responsive to the several spirit-flames. | |
| The vital form our lost now animate | |
| Is one with what in their low mortal state | |
| They made their own; the corse mere ashes, waste, | 15 |
| For all grand uses of the world replaced. | |
| A larva needs no more the unliving husk, | |
| When soaring winged he rends the dwelling dusk. | |
| |
| A rabble rout of Sense light-headed pours | |
| Into the holy Spirit-temple doors, | 20 |
| Where many a grave and stately minister | |
| His place and function doth on each confer. | |
| These Forms inhabiting the sacred gloom, | |
| Whose name is legion, Present, Past, To Come, | |
| One, Many, Same, or Different, evolve | 25 |
| Sweet concord from confusion; they resolve | |
| The Babel dissonance to a choral song, | |
| Till in divine societies a throng | |
| Sets with one will toward the inmost shrine, | |
| To feed there upon mystic Bread and Wine. | 30 |
| The Bacchanals are sobered, and grow grave, | |
| In solemn silence treading the dim nave: | |
| On their light hearts bloom-pinioned angels lay | |
| Calm, hushful hands of married night and day. | |
| |
| It is a changing scene within the pile: | 35 |
| New shows arrive, and tarry for a while: | |
| But if one living Spirit-fane could fall, | |
| His ruin were the knell of doom for all. | |
| Their being blended each with every one, | |
| If any failed, the universe were gone. | 40 |
| These conscious forms inhabit every mind; | |
| All selves in one organic self they bind; | |
| The bloomy beams, and all the shadowy blooms | |
| Are pure white Light eternal that illumes | |
| A universal conscious Spirit-whole, | 45 |
| Fair modulated in each several soul | |
| To many-functioned organs of one Will, | |
| Whose sovran Being who prevails to kill? | |
| We may expand our being to embrace, | |
| And mirror all therein of every race; | 50 |
| Each is himself by universal grace. | |
| Dying is self-fulfilment; and we cherish | |
| His life, who, wanting ours, would wholly perish. | |
| The Father may not be without the Son; | |
| No love, will, knowledge, were for Him alone. | 55 |
| And change is naught | |
| Save at the bar of a sole personal thought, | |
| Enthroned for judgement, summoning past time | |
| With present, hearing now concordant rhyme, | |
| Now variance among voices vanishing, | 60 |
| That so win semblance of substantial thing. | |
| But how conceive that there may ever be | |
| Change in the nerve of change, our known identity? | |
| |
| If we, poor worms, involved in our own cloud, | |
| Deem the wide world lies darkling in a shroud, | 65 |
| Raving the earth holds no felicity, | |
| One child’s clear laughter may rebuke the lie, | |
| A lark’s light rapture soaring in the blue, | |
| Or rainbow radiant from a drop of dew! | |
| |
| Nor let a low-born Sense usurp the rule, | 70 |
| Who is but handmaid in a loftier school, | |
| Where Love and Conscience a lore not of earth | |
| Impart to Wisdom, child of heavenly birth. | |
| O Thou unknown, inscrutable Divine! | |
| I deem that I am Thine, and Thou art mine; | 75 |
| And though I may not gaze into Thy face, | |
| I feel that all are clasped in Thine embrace. | |
| The Christ is with us, and He points to Thee: | |
| When we have grown into Him we shall see; | |
| Behold the Father in the perfect Son, | 80 |
| And feel, with Him, Thy holy will be done! | |
| |
| Love may not compass her full harmony, | |
| Wanting the deep dread note of those who die. | |
| And as with master-hand He sweeps the grand awakening chords, | |
| Our wailing sighs leap winged, live talismanic words, | 85 |
| Dull woes and errors tempered to seraphic swords, | |
| Love’s colour-chorus flames with glorious morning-red, | |
| His alchemy transmuting the poured heart’s blood of our dead, | |
| And lurid bale from murderous eyes of souls who inly bled! | |
| |
| Whose mortal mind may sail around the ocean of Thy might, | 90 |
| Billowing away in awful gloom to issues infinite? | |
| Bind Thee with his poor girdle? Surveying all thy shore! | |
| His daring sinks confounded, foundering evermore, | |
| In his dazed ear reverberating a tempestuous roar! | |
| …Who sounds the abyss of Thine immense design? We rest, | 95 |
| Aware that Thou art better than our best. | |
