Part 16

This miracle which saves Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, By virtue of his worth, contrasting much With brutes and knaves.

XXIII

From dust, of him abhorred, He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. ‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth! Me take, dear Lord!’

XXIV

She hears him. Him she owes For half her loveliness a love well won By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, Their common foes.

XXV

He builds the soaring spires, That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, Her purest fires.

XXVI

Through him hath she exchanged, For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown Where monsters ranged.

XXVII

And order, high discourse, And decency, than which is life less dear, She has of him: the lyre of language clear, Love’s tongue and source.

XXVIII

She hears him, and can hear With glory in his gains by work achieved: With grief for grief that is the unperceived In her so near.

XXIX

If he aloft for aid Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. His cry to heaven is a cry to her He would evade.

XXX

Not elsewhere can he tend. Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; Those her revulsions from the skull that grins To ape his end.

XXXI

And her desires are those For happiness, for lastingness, for light. ’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night The hoped dawn-rose.

XXXII

Fair fountains of the dark Daily she waves him, that his inner dream May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, A quivering lark:

XXIII

This life and her to know For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee To feel stern joy her origin: not he The child of woe.

XXXIV

But that the senses still Usurp the station of their issue mind, He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind: As yet he will;

XXXV

As yet he will, she prays, Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;— The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf In shifting rays;—

XXXVI