Chapter I: Shall Make Beauty

I shall make beauty out of many things:
Lights, colours, motions, sky and earth and sea,
The soft unbosoming of all the springs
Which that inscrutable hand allows to me,
Odours of flowers, sounds of smitten strings,
The voice of many a wind in many a tree,
Fields, rivers, moors, swift feet and floating wings,
Rocks, caves, and hills that stand and clouds that flee.

Men also and women, beautiful and dear,
Shall come and pass and leave a fragrant breath;
And my own heart, laughter and pain and fear,
The majesties of evil and of death;
But never, never shall my verses trace
The loveliness of your most lovely face.

ENVOI

Beloved, when my heart's awake to God
And all the world becomes His testimony,
In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,
Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,
A pure jet from the fountain of all being,
A scripture clearer than all else to read.

And when belief was dead and God a myth,
And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil,
Endurable only by its impermanence,
And all the planets perishable urns
Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung
Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe.

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH