| |
| WHY stand’st thou thus at gaze | |
| In the faint taper’s rays, | |
| With strainèd eyeballs fixed upon that bed? | |
| Has he then flown away, | |
| Lost, like a star in day, | 5 |
| Or like a pearl in depths unfathomèd? | |
| Alas! thou hast done very ill, | |
| Thus with thine eyes the vision of thy soul to kill | |
| |
| Thought’st thou that earthly light | |
| Could then assist thy sight? | 10 |
| Or that the limits of reality | |
| Could grasp things fairer than | |
| Imagination’s span, | |
| Who communes with the angels of the sky? | |
| Thou graspest at the rainbow, and | 15 |
| Would’st make it as the zone with which thy waist is spann’d! | |
| |
| And what find’st thou in his stead? | |
| Only the empty bed! | |
| And what is that when no more hallowed by | |
| Imagination? a mere sty | 20 |
| For Sensualism to wallow in, | |
| To which thy fault is near akin; | |
| Thou sought’st the earthly and therefore | |
| The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar! | |
| |
| For the bright world of | 25 |
| Pure and boundless love | |
| What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room | |
| Put out that light, | |
| Restore thy soul its sight, | |
| For better ’tis to dwell in outward gloom, | 30 |
| Than thus, by the vile body’s eye, | |
| To rob the soul of its infinity! | |
| |
| Love, Love has wings, and he | |
| Soon out of sight will flee, | |
| Lost in far ether to the sensual eye, | 35 |
| But the soul’s vision true | |
| Can track him, yea! up to | |
| The Presence and the Throne of the Most High: | |
| For thence he is, and tho’ he dwell below, | |
| To the soul only he his genuine form will show! | 40 |
| |
| Oh Psyche, Psyche, ’tis by our own thought | |
| That Heaven’s gifts to fit use must be wrought, | |
| But what the soul itself can scarcely grasp, | |
| Thou in thine arms wouldst sensually clasp! | |
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