TWIFOLD the brain of God which urns
All that the eyes of mortals claim:
Each bodied thought a thought which burns
Into a death as it returns
To its own sempiternal name.
Thus cosmos, upon cosmos, wheels
From bodied thought to thought again;
And Time must give back what he steals:
Ceaseless the world’s calm music peals
Within the cathedral of God’s brain.
Time is eternity’s swift night:
Time is the shade of timeless being
Flung in a shadow which is bright;
For God’s own shadow is the light:
A night-time starrier than our seeing.
About His shadow, glim on glim,
(Time’s tapers in the nave of space)
Flicker those bodied thoughts from Him:
What multitudinous lust or whim
Gave to each fetter’d world its place?
And what the whim, or sure desire,
That brought us from His burning sight:
Unto what thoughts do we aspire?
We, who as God, have thoughts of fire
Which are but shadows — in the light.
We are his words made flesh; and each
Is pregnant with one, only thought;
Part of that Mind’s transtellar speech
We hear Him in ourselves, and reach
Unto the breath whence we were brought.
Out from the last, lone, looming star;
Out from all memories entwin’d
About ourselves in avatar,
We shall pass to those thoughts we are
Athwart the high road of His Mind.
