81. Aishah Shechinah

A SHAPE, like folded light, embodied air,

Yet wreathed with flesh, and warm:

All that of heaven is feminine and fair,

Moulded in visible form,

She stood, the Lady Shechinah of earth,

A chancel for the sky:

Where woke, to breath and beauty, God’s own Birth,

For men to see Him by.

Round her, too pure to mingle with the day,

Light, that was life, abode;

Folded within her fibres meekly lay

The link of boundless God.

So linked, so blent, that when, with pulse fulfilled,

Moved but that Infant Hand,

Far, far away, His conscious Godhead thrilled,

And stars might understand.

Lo! where they pause, with inter-gathering rest,

The Threefold, and the One;

And lo, He binds them to her orient breast,

His manhood girded on.

The zone, where two glad worlds for ever meet,

Beneath that bosom ran:

Deep in that womb the conquering Paraclete

Smote Godhead on to man.

Sole scene among the stars, where, yearning, glide

The Threefold and the One;

Her God upon her lap, the Virgin Bride,

Her awful Child, her Son!