| THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD is the wisdom of man— | |
| This is the end of Being, wisdom; this | |
| Of wisdom, action; and of action, rest; | |
| And of rest, bliss; that by experience sage | |
| Of good and ill, the diametric powers | 5 |
| Which thwart the world, the thrice-born might discern | |
| That death divine alone can perfect both, | |
| The mediate and initiate; that between | |
| The Deity and nothing, nothing is. | |
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| The Atlantean axis of the world | 10 |
| And all the undescribed circumference, | |
| Where earth’s thick breath thins off to blankest space | |
| Uniting with inanity, this truth | |
| Confess, the sun-sire and the death-world too, | |
| And undeflected spirit pure from Heaven, | 15 |
| That He who makes, destroying, saves the whole. | |
| The Former and Re-Former of the world | |
| In wisdom’s holy spirit all renew. | |
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| To know this, is to read the runes of old, | |
| Wrought in the time-outlasting rock; to see | 20 |
| Unblinded in the heart of light; to feel | |
| Keen through the soul, the same essential strain, | |
| Which vivifies the clear and fire-eyed stars, | |
| Still harping their serene and silvery spell | |
| In the perpetual presence of the skies, | 25 |
| And of the world-cored calm, where silence sits | |
| In secret light all hidden; this to know— | |
| Brings down the fiery unction from on high, | |
| The spiritual chrism of the sun, | |
| Which hallows and ordains the regnant soul— | 30 |
| Transmutes the splendid fluid of the frame | |
| Into a fountain of divine delight, | |
| And renovative nature;—shows us earth, | |
| One with the great galactic line of life | |
| Which parts the hemispheral palm of Heaven; | 35 |
| This with all spheres of Being makes concord | |
| As at the first creation, in that peace | |
| Premotional, pre-elemental, prime, | |
| Which is the hope of earth, the joy of Heaven, | |
| The choice of the elect, the grace of life, | 40 |
| The blessing and the glory of our God. | |
| And—as the vesper hymn of time precedes | |
| The starry matins of Eternity, | |
| And daybreak of existence in the Heavens,— | |
| To know this, is to know we shall depart | 45 |
| Into the storm-surrounding calm on high, | |
| The sacred cirque, the all-central infinite | |
| Of that self-blessedness wherein abides | |
| Our God, all-kind, all-loving, all-beloved;— | |
| To feel life one great ritual, and its laws, | 50 |
| Writ in the vital rubric of the blood, | |
| Flow in, obedience, and flow out, command, | |
| In sealike circulation; and be here | |
| Accepted as a gift by Him who gives | |
| An empire as an alms, nor counts it aught, | 55 |
| So long as all His creatures joy in Him, | |
| The great Rejoicer of the Universe, | |
| Whom all the boundless spheres of Being bless. | |
