| A SHAPE, like folded light, embodied air, | |
| Yet wreathed with flesh, and warm: | |
| All that of heaven is feminine and fair, | |
| Moulded in visible form, | |
|
| She stood, the Lady Shechinah of earth, | 5 |
| A chancel for the sky: | |
| Where woke, to breath and beauty, God’s own Birth, | |
| For men to see Him by. | |
|
| Round her, too pure to mingle with the day, | |
| Light, that was life, abode; | 10 |
| Folded within her fibres meekly lay | |
| The link of boundless God. | |
|
| So linked, so blent, that when, with pulse fulfilled, | |
| Moved but that Infant Hand, | |
| Far, far away, His conscious Godhead thrilled, | 15 |
| And stars might understand. | |
|
| Lo! where they pause, with inter-gathering rest, | |
| The Threefold, and the One; | |
| And lo, He binds them to her orient breast, | |
| His manhood girded on. | 20 |
|
| The zone, where two glad worlds for ever meet, | |
| Beneath that bosom ran: | |
| Deep in that womb the conquering Paraclete | |
| Smote Godhead on to man. | |
|
| Sole scene among the stars, where, yearning, glide | 25 |
| The Threefold and the One; | |
| Her God upon her lap, the Virgin Bride, | |
Her awful Child, her Son!
(I am human, therefore nothing human is strange to me) |
