Spirit Supreme

Who musest in the silence of the heart,

Eternal gleam,

Thou only Art!

Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled,

My sunlit part

By clouds assailed?

Why am I thus disfigured by desire,

Distracted, haled,

Scorched by the fire

Of fitful passions, from thy peace out-thrust

Into the gyre

Of every gust?

Betrayed to grief, o’ertaken with dismay,

Surprised by lust?

Let not my grey

Blood-clotted past repel thy sovereign ruth,

Nor even delay,

O lonely Truth!

Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still

Deceive my youth.

These clamours still;

For I would hear the eternal voice and know

The eternal Will.

This brilliant show

Cumbering the threshold of eternity

Dispel, - bestow

The undimmed eye,

The heart grown young and clear. Rebuke, O Lord,

These hopes that cry

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  So deafeningly,

Remove my sullied centuries, restore

My purity.

O hidden door

Of Knowledge, open! Strength, fulfil thyself!

Love, outpour!   

      On the Mountains

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom,

Hills of a sterile grandeur, rocks that sublime

In bareness seek the blue sky’s infinite room

With their coeval snows untouched by Time!

I seek your solemn spaces! Let me at last

Forgotten of thought through days immemorable

Voiceless and needless keep your refuge vast,

Growing into the peace in which I dwell.

For like that Soul unmade you seem to brood

Who sees all things emerge but none creates,

Watching the ages from His solitude,

Lone, unconcerned, remote. You to all Fates

Offer an unmoved¹  heart and therefore abide,

Who seek not, act not, strive not nor rebel.

Like you, who are may grow like Him, as wide,

Mere, uncreative, imperturbable.

¹unchanged   ²To be like you, grow like Him, silent, wide.

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