Lascelles Abercrombie (1881–1938)

WE are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,

As thóu, Lóve, were, the déep thought

And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,

Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn’d not through us thy imagining

Like fiérce móod in a sóng cáught,

We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,

Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,—

The lives travelling dark fears,

And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool

Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth

And our journeying time theirs;

As words of air, life makes of starry earth

Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;

The great wind of the world’s fate

Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind

And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter’d,

Not borne down by the wind’s weight;

The rushing time rings with our splendid word

Like darkness fill’d with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,

And Love’s meaning our life wields,

Making our souls like syllables to throng

His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,

As rain blown along earth’s fields;

Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,

Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,

We go charged with a strong flame;

For as a language Love hath seized on life

His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee,

Thy thought’s golden and glad name,

The mortal conscience of immortal glee,

Love’s zeal in Love’s own glory.