Her mouth is like the mouth of a fine bust

That cannot utter sound nor breathe nor kiss

But that had once from Life received all this

Which shaped its subtle curves and ever must

From fullness of past knowledge dwell alone

A thing apart a parable in stone.

Alone Thou wanderest through space

Profound One with the hidden face;

Thou art Poverty’s great rose

The eternal metamorphose

Of gold into the light of sun.

Thou art the mystic homeless One;

Into the world Thou never came

Too mighty Thou too great to name;

Voice of the storm Song that the wild wind sings

Thou Harp that shatters those who play Thy strings!

A watcher of Thy spaces make me

Make me a listener at Thy stone

Give to me vision and then wake me

Upon Thy oceans all alone.

Thy rivers’ courses let me follow

Where they leap the crags in their flight

And where at dusk in caverns hollow

They croon to music of the night.

Send me far into Thy barren land

Where the snow clouds the wild wind drives

Where monasteries like gray shrouds stand—

August symbols of unlived lives.

There pilgrims climb slowly one by one

And behind them a blind man goes:

With him I will walk till day is done

Up the pathway that no one knows …