By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. Light out of light! Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard! Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore, Be it accounted unto me, A bright sciential idolatry! God has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders, And what want I of prophecy, That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see The seals that melt, the open revelation? Or who a God-persuading angel needs, That only heeds The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? Which but to sing, if it may be, In worship-warranting moiety, So I would win In such a song as hath within A smouldering core of mystery, Brimmèd with nimbler meanings up Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;-- Lo, my suit pleads That thou, Isaian coal of fire, Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. To thine own shape Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains. Destroyer and preserver, thou Who medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthankèd marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bow And bright appurtenances of thy brow! Thy proper blood dost thou not give, That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance? Art thou not life of them that live? Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell Within our body as a tabernacle! Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet. Thou to thy spousal universe Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. The heavens renew their innocence And morning state But by thy sacrament communicate; Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search, And sinful vigil desolate. Yea, biune in imploring dumb, Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await; The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! Lo, of thy Magians I the least Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun--or is 't perchance, to Christ?