‘Mother of this unfathomable world! Favour my solemn song; for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black Death Keeps records of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness; Like an inspired and desperate alchymist, Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love; until strange tears, Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge ... and though ne’er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now, And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre, Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane), I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.’ The accompaniments are fanciful; but the essential passion was his own.