ON A CATARACT

Unperishing youth!

Thou leapest from forth

The cell of thy hidden nativity;

Never mortal saw

The cradle of the strong one;

Never mortal heard

The gathering of his voices;

The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock,

That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.

There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil

At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;

It embosoms the roses of dawn,

It entangles the shafts of the noon,

And into the bed of its stillness

The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,

That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven

May be born in a holy twilight!