When on the primal peaceful blank profound, Which in its still unknowing silence holds All knowledge, ever by withholding holds— When on that void (like footfalls in far rooms), In faint pulsations from the whitening East Articulate voices first were felt to stir, And the great child, in dreaming grown to man, Losing his dream to piece it up began; Then Plato in me said, ‘’Tis but the figured ceiling overhead, With cunning diagrams bestarred, that shine In all the three dimensions, are endowed With motion too by skill mechanical, That thou in height, and depth, and breadth, and power, Schooled unto pure Mathesis, might proceed To higher entities, whereof in us Copies are seen, existent they themselves In the sole kingdom of the Mind and God. Mind not the stars, mind thou thy Mind and God.’ By that supremer Word O’ermastered, deafly heard Were hauntings dim of old astrologies; Chaldean mumblings vast, with gossip light From modern ologistic fancyings mixed, Of suns and stars, by hypothetic men Of other frame than ours inhabited, Of lunar seas and lunar craters huge. And was there atmosphere, or was there not? And without oxygen could life subsist? And was the world originally mist?— Talk they as talk they list, I, in that ampler voice, Unheeding, did rejoice. _SELENE._ My beloved, is it nothing Though we meet not, neither can, That I see thee, and thou me, That we see, and see we see, When I see I also feel thee; Is it nothing, my beloved? Thy luminous clear beauty Brightens on me in my night, I withdraw into my darkness To allure thee into light. About me and upon me I feel them pass and stay, About me, deep into me, every lucid tender ray. And thou, thou also feelest When thou stealest Shamefaced and half afraid To the chamber of thy shade, Thou in thy turn, Thou too feelest Something follow, something yearn, A full orb blaze and burn. My full orb upon thine, As thine erst, gently smiling, Softly wooing, sweetly wiling, Gleamed on mine; So mine on thine in turn When thou feelest blaze and burn, Is it nothing, my beloved? My beloved, is it nothing When I see thee and thou me, When we each other see, Is it nothing, my beloved? Closer, closer come unto me. Shall I see thee and no more? I can see thee, is that all? Let me also, Let me feel thee, Closer, closer, my beloved, Come unto me, come to me, come! O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not, Lookest onward, look’st before, Yet I follow, evermore. Oh, cold and cruel fate, thou rollest on thy way, Scarcely lookest, wilt not stay, From thine alien way. The inevitable motion Bears me forth upon the line Whose course I cannot see. I must move as it conveys me Evermore. It so must be.