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- 39
- u80ici1.11h48. O my Lord, my beloved! How shall I indite songs, when even
- the memory of the shadow of thy glory is a thing beyond all music of speech or
- of silence?
-
- 49. Behold! I am a man. Even a little child might not endure Thee. And lo!
-
- 50. I was alone in a great park, and by a certain hillock was a ring of deep
- enamelled grass wherein green-clad ones, most beautiful, played.
-
- 51. In their play I came even unto the land of Fairy Sleep.
-
- All my thoughts were clad in green; most beautiful were they.
-
- 52. All night they danced and sang; but Thou art the morning, O my darling,
- my serpent that twinest Thee about this heart.
-
- 53. I am the heart, and Thou the serpent. Wind Thy coils closer about me, so
- that no light nor bliss may penetrate.
-
- 54. Crush out the blood of me, as a grape upon the tongue of a white Doric
- girl that languishes with her lover in the moonlight.
-
- 55. Then let the End awake. Long hast thou slept, O great God Terminus!
- Long ages hast thou waited at the end of the city and the roads thereof.
-
- Awake Thou! wait no more!
-
- 56. Nay, Lord! but I am come to Thee. It is I that wait at last.
-
- 57. The prophet cried against the mountain; come thou hither, that I may
- speak with thee!
-
- 58. The mountain stirred not. Therefore went the prophet unto the mountain,
- and spake unto it. But the feet of the prophet were weary, and the mountain
- heard not his voice.
-
- 59. But I have called unto Thee, and I have journeyed unto Thee, and it
- availed me not.
-
- 60. I waited patiently, and Thou wast with me from the beginning.
-
- 61. This now I know, O my beloved, and we are stretched at our ease among the
- vines.
-
- 62. But these thy prophets; they must cry aloud and scourge themselves; they
- must cross trackless wastes and unfathomed oceans; to await Thee is the end,
- not the beginning.
-
- 63. Let darkness cover up the writing! Let the scribe depart among his ways.
-
- 64. But thou and I are stretched at our ease among the vines; what is he?
-
- 65. O Thou beloved One! is there not an end? Nay, but there is an end.
- Awake! arise! gird up thy limbs, O thou runner; bear thou the Word unto the
- mighty cities, yea, unto the mighty cities.
-