I.
Where time doth race
Across the flatted fields of edgeless space
Thou shalt not hear its news, nor its retreat discover.
No! 'tis a dance
Where love perpetual ,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.
II.
Heaven's not a rest.
No! but to battle with new zest:
Untired, with warrior joy
The sharp clean spirit employ
On life's new enterprise.
It's the surprise
Of keen delighted mind
That wakes to find
Old fetters gone,
Strong shining immortality put on.
III.
Heaven is to be
In God at last made free,
There more and more
Strange secrets of communion to explore:
Within the mighty movements of His will
Our tangled loves fulfil:
To pluck the rosemary we cannot reach
With the mind's span,
And so at last
Breathe the rich fragrance of our hoarded past
And learn the slow unfolding of the plan.
Together we unroll
The blazened story of the pilgrim soul;
All the long ardent pain,
The craving and the bliss at last made plain.
Sometimes to sleep
Locked each to each
Within his deep,
Or playing in his wave
The sudden splendour of the flood to brave:
Great tide of his undimmed vitality
That breaks in beauty on the world's wide beach
And draws all life again toward its heart,
Stirring to new and mutual increase
Love-quickened souls therein that have their part,
Therein that find their peace.
~Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941)
