ANWYL

A darkened easement in a darker room

Was all his home, whence weary and bowed and white

He watched across the slowly gathering gloom

The slowly westering light.

Bitterness in his heavy-clouded eyes,

Bitterness as of heaven's intestine wars

Brooded; he looked upon the unfathomed skies

And whispered — to the stars —

Some day, he said, she will forget all this

That she calls life, and looking far above

See throned among the great eternities

This dream of mine, this love;

Love that has given my soul these wings of fire

To beat in glory above the sapphire sea,

Until the wings of the infinite desire

Close in infinity;

Love that has taken the glory of hawthorn boughs,

And all the dreaming beauty of hazel skies,

As ministers to the radiance of her brows

And haunted April eyes;

Love that is hidden so deep beneath the dust

Of little daily duties and delights,

Till that reproachful face of hers grows just

And God at last requites

A soul whose dream was deeper than the skies,

A heart whose hope was wider than the sea,

Yet could not enter through his true love's eyes

Their grey infinity.

And so I know I wound her all day long

Because my heart must seem so far away;

And even my love completes the silent wrong

For all that it can say

Seems vast and meaningless to mortal sense;

Its vague desire can never reach its goal

Till knowledge vanishes in omniscience

And God surrounds her soul,

Breaking its barriers down and flooding in

Through all her wounds in one almighty tide,

Mingling her soul with that great Love wherein

My soul waits, glorified.