“I catch it, Norman,” cried she, “the ideal!
Henceforth our aim be this,—the art of life.
I saw it not before: the stage of spirit
So much more broad is than the stage of sense!
Comes on the soul now, actor, all divine,
At play no longer; nay, but shadowing forth
A love complete that personates a God!
And what love is complete that walks alone?”
“None,” answer’d I. “In true love, hand in hand,
Each leads his like. For this the whole world waits.
It waits for love,—why say not love like ours?
When souls touch souls, they touch the springs of life;
For them the veils of sense are drawn aside,
Are burn’d away in radiance divine,
The while their spirit’s contact starts afresh
The electric flash that scores new glory here,
And lights the lines of being back to God.
Then, with their whole existences renew’d,
Far up these lines, the souls that thus commune,
Discern anon that sacred home on high,
Where boundless rest is blest by boundless love
And dreams the dreams of bounty absolute.—
They find that home, whence issue floods of light,
Which, flowing forth from white mysterious heights,
Flame down and flash and burst anon in sparks
That star the dark through all life’s firmament;—
They find that home, whence whirl the cycles wide
Where all the wastes of nature fuse and form,
And all the things that thought can touch take shape,
Until the restless wheels of matter, roll’d
Through roadways worn to waste by speeding years,
At last in fatal friction fire themselves,
And light returns to light from whence it sprang.
Through all, where souls commune with central love,
They stay secure, awaiting birth or death;
The Spring that starts the blossom blown to fall,
Or Fall that drops the seed that springs afresh.
They watch nor fear whatever change evolve,—
The splendor grand of epochs borne to waste,
The ruin wild of times that end in law,
The monarch mail’d whose lustre dims his folk,
The people’s guns whose echoes hush their king.
What though dark clouds loom up and storms descend?
True faith would not bemoan the forms they wreck;
For forms if true are formulas of love
That still is ardent to consume them all.
Though lightnings thunder till they crack the sky,
What unroofs rage leaves heaven to dome our peace.
The more convulsion shakes and fire consumes,
The more of love and light may both set free;
The earlier may they end these earthly days
That fret our lives with flickerings vague below
Of steadfast light in endless day above;
The earlier may the power of hate give way,
And good awake, and every path be bright,
While hope of glory gilds the gloom on high.
We too—come, Edith. Christ will go with us;
And by and by the glory so shall flame
Heaven cannot hold the halo!—Edith, come;
We join the plans above.”