There are who, when the bat on wing transverse
Skims the swart surface of some neighbouring mere,
  Catch that thin cry too fine for common ear:
  Thus the last joy-note of the universe
Is borne to those few listeners who immerse
  Their intellectual hearing in no clear
  Paean, but pierce it with the thin-edged spear
  Of utmost beauty which contains a curse.
Dead on their sense fall marches hymeneal,
  Triumphal odes, hymns, symphonies sonorous;
  They crave one shrill vibration, tense, ideal,
Transcending and surpassing the world’s chorus;
  Keen, fine, ethereal, exquisitely real,
  Intangible as star’s light quivering o’er us.

All that began with God, in God must end:
  All lives are garnered in His final bliss:
  All wills hereafter shall be one with His:
  When in the sea we sought, our spirits blend.
Rays of pure light, which one frail prism may rend
  Into conflicting colours, meet and kiss
  With manifold attraction, yet still miss
  Contentment, while their kindred hues contend.
Break but that three-edged glass: — inviolate
  The sundered beams resume their primal state,
  Weaving pure light in flawless harmony.
Thus decomposed, subject to love and strife,
  God’s thought, made conscious through man’s mortal life,
  Resumes through death the eternal unity.

Lift up your heads, gates of my heart, unfold
  Your portals to salute the King of kings!
  Behold Him come, borne on cherubic wings
  Engrained with crimson eyes and grail of gold!
Before His path the thunder-clouds withhold
  Their stormy pinions, and the desert sings:
  He from His lips divine and forehead flings
  Sunlight of peace unfathomed, bliss untold.
O soul, faint soul, disquieted how long!
  Lift up thine eyes, for lo, thy Lord is near,
  Lord of all loveliness and strength and song,
The Lord who brings heart-sadness better cheer,
  Scattering those midnight dreams that dote on wrong,
  Purging with heaven’s pure rays love’s atmosphere!