by Evelyn Underhill
Not
to me
The
Unmoved Mover of philosophy
And
absolute still sum of all that is,
The
God whom I adore -- not this!
Nay,
rather a great moving wave of bliss,
A
surging torrent of dynamic love
In
passionate swift career,
That
down the sheer
And
fathomless abyss
Of
Being ever pours, his ecstasy to prove.
As
the glad river's life
More
glad becomes in music of much strife,
So
does that spiritual flood
Dashed
in full song,
In
quick stupendous majesty of joy
The
oppositions of the world among,
Come
to fair crest in every breaking bud:
Yea,
can the very conflict's self employ
A
coloured spray of loveliness to fling
Athwart
the world-wide landscape on the wing
Of
every flying thing.
Dynamic
love glints gay on the plume's tip
Of
fat and restless wrens, tears at the heart
From
the divine and vibrant bramble wreathes
That
mesh the hedge with beauty. It out-breathes
Fragrances
of pure surrender in the smart
Of
sacrificial hay-fields. On the lip
Of
frail ecstatic poppies it brims up,
As
flaming meditations in the soul
Drowsed
with deep passion. E'en the narrow cup
Of
inconspicuous vervein still the strange
And
awful tincture to fulfilment brings:
There
doth my Dear pursue his chemic art,
And
thence distils the magic of the whole.
For
Love is time, succession, ardour, change;
It
is the holy thrust of living things
That
seek a consummation, and enlace
Some
fragment of the All in each fecund embrace
Whence
life again flows forth up its endless chase.
Love
ever moves, yet love eternal is;
Love
ever seeks, yet seeks itself to find;
And,
all-surrendered to the leman's kiss,
Doth
but itself with its own passion bind.
O
sacred, ceaseless flow!
O
wondrous meeting
Of
the unchanging and the ever fleeting,
That
still by the sad way of sorriest lust
Confers
a secret glory on the teeming dust.
See!
by love's loss we find ourselves indeed,
See!
the world's death the world's true life doth feed,
And
Love dynamic to Love's rest doth go.
