TO ONE SINGING

O voice the angels kissed when unbreathed yet!

O lips made spiritual with uttering it!

O eyes wild with the lust of the divine

In thy felt presence, making thee its shrine!

O that this moment of thee were Thyself!

That thou ne’er fell'st from this Thou, and the pelf

Of gathered days with avarice of living,

Touched thee not from this moment of God's giving!

O eternal actuality of thee!

O by thy voice sculptured immutably

In some stone‑flesh of spirit! O set free

From being all contained in being seen!

O firmament of joy purely serene

With spaciousness of soul and stars of song

Above thyself, God's human heights among!

Sing on, and let thy singing be a couch

To that of me which to my soul doth vouch

Of God as of a self and of a home!

Dissolve me to thy notes! Make me become

An outside of myself, and have in me

Nought but a selfless sense of hearing thee!

Let me pertain to the sounds thou dost voice!

Let me be other than I and rejoice

Hearing time like a breeze pass by the place

Thy song imprisons in its halcyon grace!

Thy voice compels to parapets from heaven

Dim winged happinesses whence is woven

To our souls such a glamour, spirit‑fair,

That, feeling it, all life becomes despair

And all the sense of life to wish to die.

Sing on! Between the music's human cry

And thy song's meaning there is interposed

Some third reality, less life‑enclosed,

Some subtler tenderness than music makes

Or words sung, and its moonless moonlight takes

Our visionary moods by their child‑hand

And our tired steps begin to understand.

Sing, nor stop singing till bliss ache too much!

O that I could, without moving my hand,

Stretch forth some hand imaginary and touch

That body of thine thy singing giveth thee!

That kiss‑like touch would wake eternity

In me again, and, as by a great morn,

The night my body makes of me were torn

Away from being, and my unbodied shape

Would, like a ship doubling the final cape,

Come to that sight of port and shiver of coming

That God allows to those whose bliss of roaming

Is no more than the wish to find His peace

And mingle with it as a scent with the breeze.