| LIFE of my life! soul of my inmost soul! | |
| Pure central point of everlasting light! | |
| Creative splendour! Fountain-head and goal | |
| Of all the rays that make the darkness bright— | |
| And pierce the gloom of nothing more and more | 5 |
| And win new realms from the abyss of night! | |
| O God, I veil my eyes and kneel before | |
| Thy shrine of love and tremble and adore. | |
| |
| The unfathomable past is but the dawn | |
| Of thee triumphant rising from the tomb; | 10 |
| And could we deem thy lamp of light withdrawn, | |
| Back in an instant into primal gloom | |
| All things that are, all things that time has wrought, | |
| All that shall ever yet unseal the womb | |
| Of elemental Chaos, swift as thought | 15 |
| Would melt away and leave a world of nought. | |
| |
| We gaze in wonder on the starry face | |
| Of midnight skies, and worship and aspire, | |
| Yet all the kingdoms of abysmal space | |
| Are less than thy one point of inmost fire: | 20 |
| We dare not think of time’s unending way, | |
| Yet present, past, and future would expire, | |
| And all eternity would pass away | |
| In thy one moment of intensest day. | |
| |
| Of old our fathers heard thee when the roll | 25 |
| Of midnight thunder crashed across the sky: | |
| I hear thee in the silence of the soul— | |
| Its very stillness is the majesty | |
| Of thy mysterious voice, that moves me more | |
| Than wrath of tempest as it rushes by, | 30 |
| Or booming thunder, or the surging roar | |
| Of seas that storm a never-trodden shore. | |
| |
| And they beheld thee when the lightning shone, | |
| And tore the leaden slumber of the storm | |
| With vivid flame that was and then was gone, | 35 |
| Whose blaze made blind, whose very breath was warm:— | |
| But I, if I would see thee, pray for grace | |
| To veil my eyes to every outward form, | |
| And in the darkness for a moment’s space | |
| I see the splendour of thy cloudless face. | 40 |
| |
| In thought I climb to Being’s utmost brink | |
| And pass beyond the last imagined star, | |
| And tremble and grow dizzy while I think— | |
| But thou art yet more infinitely far, | |
| O God, from me who breathe the air of sin, | 45 |
| And I am doomed to traverse worlds that are | |
| More fathomless to fancy ere I win | |
| The central altar of the soul within. | |
| |
| How shall I worship thee? With speechless awe | |
| Of guilt that shrinks when innocence is near | 50 |
| And veils its face: with faith, that ever saw | |
| Most when its eyes were clouded with a tear: | |
| With hope, the breath of spirits that aspire: | |
| Lastly, with love—the grave of every fear, | |
| The fount of faith, the triumph of desire, | 55 |
| The burning brightness of thine own white fire.… | |
| |
| O God that dwellest in transcendent light | |
| Beyond our dreams, who grope in darkness here, | |
| Beyond imagination’s utmost flight,— | |
| I bless thee most that sometimes when a tear | 60 |
| Of tender yearning rises unrepressed, | |
| Lo! for an instant thou art strangely near— | |
| Nearer to my own heart than I who rest | |
| In speechless adoration on thy breast. | |
