... The living daylight Clouds and thickens. Flashes of sudden clearness stream before me,--and then A menacing wave of darkness Swallows the glow with floods of vast and indeterminate grey. But in the flashes I see the white form towering, Dim, ominous, Like some apostate monk whose will unholy Has renounced God; and now In this most awful secret laboratory Would wring from matter Its stark and appalling answer. At the gates of a bitter hell he stands, to wrest with eager fierceness More of that dark forbidden knowledge Wherefrom his soul draws fervor to deny. The clouds have grown thicker; they sway around me Dizzying, terrible, gigantic, pressing in upon me Like a thousand monsters of the deep with formless arms. I cannot push them back, I cannot! From far, far off, a voice I knew long ago Sounds faintly thin and clear. Suddenly in a desperate rebellion I strive to answer,-- I strive to call aloud.-- But darkness chokes and overcomes me: None may hear my soundless cry. A depth abysmal opens And receives, enfolds, engulfs me,-- Wherein to sink at last seems blissful Even though to deeper pain.... O respite and peace of deliverance! The silence Lies over me like a benediction. As in the earth's first pale creation-morn Among winds and waters holy I am borne as I longed to be borne. I am adrift in the depths of an ocean grey Like seaweed, desiring solely To drift with the winds and waters; I sway Into their vast slow movements; all the shores Of being are laved by my tides. I am drawn out toward spaces wonderful and holy Where peace abides, And into golden aeons far away. But over me Where I swing slowly Bodiless in the bodiless sea, Very far, Oh very far away, Glimmeringly Hangs a ghostly star Toward whose pure beam I must flow resistlessly. Well do I know its ray! It is the light beyond the worlds of space, By groping sorrowing man yet never known-- The goal where all men's blind and yearning desire Has vainly longed to go And has not gone:-- Where Eternity has its blue-walled dwelling-place, And the crystal ether opens endlessly To all the recessed corners of the world, Like liquid fire Pouring a flood through the dimness revealingly; Where my soul shall behold, and in lightness of wonder rise higher Out of the shadow that long ago Around me with mortality was furled. I rise where have winds Of the night never flown; Shaken with rapture Is the vault of desire. The weakness that binds Like a shadow is gone. The bonds of my capture Are sundered with fire! This is the hour When the wonders open! The lightning-winged spaces Through which I fly Accept me, a power Whose prisons are broken-- * * * * *