Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, flung like rose of dawn across the sea, alone can flush the exalted consciousness with shafts of sensible divinity-light of the world, essential loveliness.
There was a stately drama writ
By the hand that peopled the earth and air,
And set the stars in the infinite,
And made night gorgeous and morning fair;
And all that had sense to reason knew
That bloody drama must be gone through.
Some sat and watched how the action veered--
Waited, profited, trembled, cheered--
We saw not clearly nor understood,
But yielding ourselves to the masterhand,
Each in his part as best he could,
We played it through as the author planned.
But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.