| ONCE, long before the birth of time, a storm | |
| Of white desire, by its own ardour hurled, | |
| Flashed out of infinite Desire, took form, | |
| Strove, won, survived: and God became the world. | |
| |
| Next, some internal force began to move | 5 |
| Within the bosom of that latest earth: | |
| The spirit of an elemental love | |
| Stirred outward from itself, and God was birth. | |
| |
| Then outward, upward, with heroic thew, | |
| Savage from young and bursting blood of life, | 10 |
| Desire took form, and conquered, and anew | |
| Strove, conquered, and took form: and God was strife | |
| |
| Thus, like a comet, fiery flight on flight; | |
| Flash upon flash, and purple morn on morn: | |
| But always out of agony—delight; | 15 |
| And out of death—God evermore reborn, | |
| |
| Till, waxing fair and subtle and supreme, | |
| Desiring his own spirit to possess, | |
| Man of the bright eyes and the ardent dream | |
| Saw paradise, and God was consciousness. | 20 |
| |
| He is that one Desire, that life, that breath, | |
| That Soul which, with infinity of pain, | |
| Passes through revelation and through death | |
| Onward and upward to itself again. | |
| |
| Out of the lives of heroes and their deeds, | 25 |
| Out of the miracle of human thought, | |
| Out of the songs of singers, God proceeds; | |
| And of the soul of them his Soul is wrought. | |
| |
| Nothing is lost: all that is dreamed or done | |
| Passes unaltered the eternal way, | 30 |
| Immerging in the everlasting One, | |
| Who was the dayspring and who is the day. | |
