A song was born in the heart of Love,
To leap in flame from the lips thereof—
A song of rapture, whose rhythmic grace
Brimmed the epic silence of space;
A song of wonder, a song of might,
Its measures life, its melody light;
A song of glory, its thundered theme
Truth imperial. Truth supreme.
Fleet it flashed as an anvil-spark—
A Titan thorn—through the flesh of dark,
While down from the widening wound dripped dawn
In petals of pearl and saffron and fawn;
Like a torrent, it swept over desert and pass;
Like dewdrops, it gleamed on the wayside grass;
it shook the stars; it pathed the sea
With metrical trails of radiancy;
It leashed the winds with a silken cord;
And it fell a flambeau, a naked sword—
Too swift, too bright for outward ken—
On the naked and tenebrous hearts of men.
One exalted and lowly, One flawless and fair,
Stood aloft in the peace that is perfect prayer;
One whose sandals the angels bound,
Stood aloof and aloft on lilied ground,
Sceptered with splendor of holiness wrought,
Robed in the purple of towering thought—
Aloof at the head of the heavenly throng,
Aloft in the solar surge of the song—
And the mighty measures his white heart heard
Blazed through that whiteness the way of the Word.
