Classic Poem

Even as a hawk's in the large heaven's hollow
Are the great ways and gracious of your love:
No lesser flight or wearier wing may follow
In those broad gyres where you rest and move.

Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely —
In the clear space between the sky and sea
Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only
Wander the sun-roads of Immensity.

Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion
Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne —
Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion,
Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn.

You are most beautiful, but it is given
But few to find you, fewer still to keep
Your high path through the solitude of heaven,
My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep.

Now toward the gold glow of the sunset's splendor
Veer your great vans. What haven in the west
Now draws you — while the mellowing light makes tender
Your dripping plumes — what islands of the blest?

Lift me, O lift me up to you forever,
Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might
Stoop to me here, and save — O let me never
Sink from you now, to share a lesser flight!

Even as I pray, my wings of longing fail me,
And my heart flags. In solitude you move
Down the night's shore: not praying shall avail me,
To lift me, fallen from your faultless love.