Hearken to the eternal lovers rejoicing!
A sunrise in their hearts, a music in their veins,
Their bodies make sweet singing to one another;
They bathe in beams from one another’s eyes.
They rejoice to belong to the Eternal Delight
Upon whose universe of buoyance they are launched,
That questions not of its way nor of its haven
But is both way and haven where it hies.
They marvel to be born in a new element,
To meet like streams as they go chiming to the sea,
To move like flames that touch and tremble; and marvelling
They look back on the voided shell they quit.
Dawn within dawn, light within light, unfolds for them
The secret of the world that flowing overflows
The sun and the moon and the farthest of the stars,
And it abounds in them, and they in it.
Beautiful are their fears as the shy-footed fawns
Safe only in wildness from the old hunter, Time,
To be assured in shadow of the heart’s solitude,
Where joy finds joy that never Time records.
They have made virgin words of that soiled alphabet
Wherewith have been written histories of sorrow,
Labour and long defeat, and proud and vain conquest;
And all their lore is those sufficing words.
Magnificent they match the music of a name
Against abhorred Silence and terrors of the abyss,
The trust of a smile against all-ignoring Night,
And one low voice against Oblivion’s greed.
Difference drew them to the enamoured wrestle,
Chosen, inevitable dear antagonists;
They cry one to the other; ‘Alone I was not I,’
‘O lovely danger!’ and ‘O my angel need!’
‘Because thy sweetness is so troubling and so sharp,
Full of blood-thrilling strangeness, unexplored peril,
Never to be possessed, always to be desired,
Thou unknown world, I will dare all for thee.’
‘Though in a moment thou hast made me to forget
All that I was and had, triumphing I hold thee;
To thy darkness of strength I give and commit me;
Here is thy world, O sail upon my sea!’
As the East that quickens and flushes to the height
Answering the ardour of the West, and as a rose
Quivers on the western cloud before the dayspring,
Divided as the East and West they are:
But upon ways invisible to mortal sense
Moves their bright union, where was created new
Love’s wondrous world; from the darkness it emerges;
It is their Evening and their Morning Star.
Out of the hollows of unpenetrated Night
From afar calls to them, though they have known it not,
A voice that is theirs, yet is not theirs, a new voice
Never yet heard, yet older than all things;
Laughter of a child’s voice, sweeter than any sound
On the earth or in the air, voice of eternal joy,
Victorious over the bowed wisdom of mortals,
A well beyond the world, that springs and sings.