What Thing More Beautiful?
If there be some one thing more breautiful
Than to lie with you in warmth and dark,
I would fear that it might burn my soul away
Before the purging purity of light
Its perfection must diffuse.
Your love is all the beauty I may stand.
I carry what we make within this dark,
Our human near-perfection, out into the light
Each day; each moment as I stand
Against the ravages of life I take away
Those stains that fall diffuse
Upon my careless soul, and mar the beautiful.
It is the love of you that brings the light
Into the confusion of my doubtings' dark
Securing what fitful fate may bear away,
That grants the strength to stand
Opposed to all things foul, in alliance with the beautiful,
Committed to a hope as noble as it is diffuse.
There is a light that will not pierce the dark
As we lie conjoined, our love diffuse
About us as the night in little measures leaks away;
It would but blind the eye, if seen, this sacred light
Before which no ill thought may stand,
This light that paints the unseen beautiful.
All worthy things are also most diffuse
As are the light, the dark, the beautiful.
Their meanings advance, recede, then turn away
From our poor apprehension's gropings dark,
Even as our hope moves us to apply what light
We may, to illumine that before which we stand.
So in the end, my mind, struck dumb, turns away
From the mystery, in consult to stand
With the heart within the lovethick dark
Where you lie near and shining without light
Within that sphere of all good things diffuse
About us, incomprehensible and beautiful.
No; there can be to me no thing so beautiful
As the light of you shining in unbroken dark:
Your love is all the beauty I may stand.
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