Can it be blood and brain, this transient force Which, by an impulse, seizes flesh and grows To man, the thing less splendid than the horse, More blind than owls, less lovely than the rose? O, by a power unknown it works the cells Of blood and brain; it has the power to see Beyond the apparent thing the something else Which it inspires dust to bring to be. Both blood and brain are its imperfect tools, Easily wrecked, soon worn, slow to attain; Only by years of toil the master rules To lovely ends those servants, blood and brain. And Death, a touch, a germ, has still the force To make him ev’n as the rose, the owl, the horse. Not only blood and brain its servants are; There is a finer power that needs no slaves, Whose lovely service distance cannot bar, Nor the green sea with all her hell of waves; Nor snowy mountains, nor the desert sand, Nor heat, nor storm, it bends to no control; It is a stretching of the spirit’s hand To touch the brother’s or the sister’s soul; So that from darkness in the narrow room I can step forth and be about her heart, Needing no star, no lantern in the gloom, No word from her, no pointing on the chart, Only red knowledge of a window flung Wide to the night, and calling without tongue. Here in the self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone, Beauty herself, the universal mind, Eternal April wandering alone; The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord, Here in the flesh, the never yet explored. Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door, Gone down full many a windy midnight lane, Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane. But useless all, though sometimes when the moon Was full in heaven and the sea was full, Along my body’s alleys came a tune Played in the tavern by the Beautiful. Then for an instant I have felt at point To find and seize her, whosoe’er she be, Whether some saint whose glory doth anoint Those whom she loves, or but a part of me, Or something that the things not understood Make for their uses out of flesh and blood.