A TAPER OF INCENSE

You are a bannered balcony

Of God's heraldic house,

Waving above the dinning throng of the days

Pennants of purple and oriflammes of crimson

And cloths of gold.

Your varying device is on every shining shield

Of the brilliant row that flames beneath the eaves

Of that house whose street is cobbled with silver clouds.

The days go down that street, the troops of days

Dark and bright, tramping to tread the earth.

Ever, with trumpets and tumult, rigor or laughter,

They pass saluting, to press upon the world,

Regiment after regiment unnumbered.

Your beauty is a balcony hung with banners

To wave them on. The foremost have sent your name

Echoing rearward to hearten new battalions.

Your beauty is the sunset's streaming flag,

It is the vivid standard of the dawn

Flapping over dazed dream-voyagers

That kneel on new sun-pooled, mysterious strands.

It wasted the moon to pallor, set the sun

Pulsing with burning blood — it shattered the mind

Of heaven into stars.

The beauty of your spirit has sent the winds

Eternally sighing, and sharpened the cold ache

Of the heart-broken, incessantly-sobbing sea.

It has scattered its sparks in the hearts of silken flowers

And has raised the frozen fury of glaciers against the North

And has permeated the South with its elusive fragrance.

Auroral over East and West it dances.

You are a crystal goblet of such wine

Set in a niche of night

That when Death quaffs you he must glow to life

Flushed with eternity.

O proud Love, so humble and human,

Yet beyond the gods to exalt —

O quiet Love, couching with the curled might and majesty

Of tawny leopards!

O tamed tiger, Love, whose golden eyes

Weep for the thrift of angels!

Thou pinnacled pain of the midnight,

Rose-strewer of daylit mire,

Transfiguration of our futile lives,

Dazzler into the secret courts of heaven —

Thou whose passion is written in all men's blood and tears

And in silver letters upon the books of God —

Make me to stand erect, and walk with danger,

And strive like a flame!

For Thou and I are struck as cymbals of God's exultation

In Life, His song!