While feeling those tears slowly drain The load of grief which had A sluggish curse within me lain, Save when remembrance wrought my brain For vivid moments mad. My tears, as treasures of a wreck That in the ocean slept, Recovered, ran without a check; And earth was my good mother's neck To which I clung and wept. I rose at length, and felt a dense Benumbed dead weight. And now The night air hung in deep suspense! A singing hush that pressed my sense And stunned me like a blow: Through my lids clenched the living air In gold and purple rings Danced musically round me there, The light it held throbbed with the glare And beat of rapid wings. Mine eyes I dared not try to raise; My Lady's beamed on me In fixed serenity of gaze, And were what old sunshiny days In childhood used to be. A gasping lapse; and I was whirled Round the faint void of space; In dizzy circles hugely hurled, I saw the constellated world With every orb embrace, To one stupendous vortex-light, Spinning a fiery ram, Then fail, struck out by sudden night; When swung adown in headlong might, Earth's touch shook through my brain. The dumb sound in mine ears was burst By her portentous voice; As sweet as death to one accursed, As unto one near blind for thirst A running water's noise. Her voice in some translucent star, Remote, beyond my sight, Was singing marvellously far; And yet so strangely near to jar, As jars too strong a light. She sang a song. She warbled low, She did not sing in words; I felt it in my spirit glow, And knew it, as with joy I know The morning shouts of birds. But hard the task I undertake, With mortal tongue to reach The utterance of my Love, and make Her high immortal meaning break To clearness through my speech! I can no more, with glimmering trope That into darkness runs, Reveal its depth, than they could hope, Who on in lifelong blindness grope, To sing of rising suns. "Or e'er that life my King had lent Was lifted into rest, His message through my lips He sent, And on thy path His glory went To guide thee to the blessed. "But thou didst turn thy face, and scorn His grace divine as nought; And set thy gaze to earth forlorn, And rage at fate, till gaunt and worn, Death mouldered in thy thought. "Thou, blindly gross, didst toy with clay, And in the ghastly gleam Of charnel gloom didst kiss decay; And many full moons waned away, And left thee in thy dream. "For with thy Lily's worldly dress Thou didst thine eyesight fill; And scorn to know its loveliness Were but an empty boast unless Made living by His will. "Thou mourn'dst not most the vanished soul Which was my Lord's through thine; But more the broken pleasure-bowl, Whose golden richness shed, when whole, Its splendour in thy wine.