| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 251. Of Consummation |
| By Arthur Edward Waite (b. 1860) |
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| WISE, O heart, is the heart which loves; but what of the heart which refrains— | |
| Not as if counting the cost, and preferring the ease to the pains, | |
| But knowing how treasures of all are neither received nor given, | |
| The aching void that is under love and above it the aching heaven? | |
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| Wise are the lips which have learn’d how long may linger the lips’ caress, | 5 |
| But wiser they who the hungering lips can chasten and repress, | |
| For that which our fain mouths burn to kiss and loving arms to embrace | |
| Has never been given to lips or arms in the world of time and space. | |
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| Wise, therefore, and wise above all, is he who does not swerve aside, | |
| But knows to his greatest need on earth is service of earth denied; | 10 |
| Who, least things asking of flesh and blood, and less than the least of rest, | |
| Goes on demanding the perfect good and disdaining the second best. | |
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| After much conquest and toil no doubt, but high in his starry tracks, | |
| Shall the greater ministers come to him burning the sacred flax, | |
| Saying: So passes the world and so the glory and light expend; | 15 |
| But the High Term, follow’d unflinching, cries: I can repay at the end. | |
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