Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, And smitten me to my knee; I am defenceless utterly.

I slept, methinks, and woke, And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash l.u.s.tihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years-- My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Yea, faileth now even dream The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, Are yielding; cords of all too weak account For earth, with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah! is Thy love indeed A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed, Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

Ah! must-- Designer infinite!-- Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; And now my heart is as a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity: Those shaken mists a s.p.a.ce unsettle, then Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again; But not ere Him who summoneth I first have seen, enwound And now my heart is as a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields Be dunged with rotten death?

[Ill.u.s.tration:

And now my heart is as a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Now of that long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit; That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: "And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

Strange, piteous, futile thing, Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said), "And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited-- Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ign.o.ble thee, Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come."

Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: That Voice is round me like a bursting sea]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Back end papers]