He in his deepest mind
That inner harmony divined
That lit the soul of John
And in the glad eyes shone
Of Dionysos, and dwelt
Where Angel Gabriel knelt
Under the dark cypress spires;
And thrilled with flameless fires
Of Secret Wisdom's rays
The Giaconda's smiling gaze;
Curving with delicate care
The pearls in Beatrice d'Este's hair;
Hiding behind the veil
Of eyelids long and pale,
In the strange gentle vision dim
Of the unknown Christ who smiled on him.
His was no vain dream
Of the things that seem,
Of date and name.
He overcame
The Outer False with the Inner True,
And overthrew
The empty show and thin deceits of sex,
Pale nightmares of this barren world that vex
The soul of man, shaken by every breeze
Too faint to stir the silver olive trees
Or lift the Dryad's smallest straying tress
Frozen in her clear marble loveliness.
He, in curved lips and smiling eyes,
Hid the last secret's faint surprise
Of one who dies in fear and pain
And lives and knows herself again.
He, in his dreaming under the sun,
Saw change and the unchanging One,
And built in grottoes blue a shrine
To hold Reality Divine.