Speak then as a son: 
“Father, I come to satisfy Thy love
With mine, for I had held Thee as remote,
The background of the stars—­Time’s yesterday—­
Illimitable Absence.  Now my heart
Communes, methinks, with somewhat teaching me
Thou art the Great To-day.  God, is it so? 
Then for all love that WAS, I thank Thee, God,
It is and yet shall hide.  And I have part
In all, for in Thine image I was made,
To Thee my spirit yearns, as Thou to mine. 
If aught be stamped of Thy Divine on me,
And man be God-like, God is like to man.

“Dear and dread Lord, I have not found it hard
To fear Thee, though Thy love in visible form
Bled ’neath a thorny crown—­but since indeed,
For kindred’s sake and likeness, Thou dost thirst
To draw men nigh, and make them one with Thee,
My soul shall answer ’Thou art what I want: 
I am athirst for God, the living God.’”

Then straightway flashes up athwart the words: 
“And if I be a son I am very far
From my great Father’s house; I am not clean. 
I have not always willed it should be so,
And the gold of life is rusted with my tears.”

It is enough.  He never said to men,
“Seek ye My face in vain.”  And have they sought—­
Beautiful children, well-beloved sons,
Opening wide eyes to ache among the moons
All night, and sighing because star multitudes
Fainted away as to a glittering haze,
And sparkled here and there like silver wings,
Confounding them with nameless, numberless,
Unbearable, fine flocks?  It is not well
For them, for thee.  Hast thou gone forth so far
To the unimaginable steeps on high
Trembling and seeking God?  Yet now come home,
Cry, cry to Him:  “I cannot search Thee out,
But Thou and I must meet.  O come, come down,
Come.”  And that cry shall have the mastery. 
Ay, He shall come in truth to visit thee,
And thou shalt mourn to Him, “Unclean, unclean,”
But never more “I will to have it so.” 
From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love
To long for, pureness to desire, a mount
Of consecration it were good to scale.

Look you, it is to-day as at the first. 
When Adam first was ’ware his new-made eyes
And opened them, behold the light!  And breath
Of God was misting yet about his mouth,
Whereof they had made his soul.  Then he looked forth
And was a part of light; also he saw
Beautiful life, and it could move.  But Eve—­Eve
was the child of midnight and of sleep. 
Lo, in the dark God led her to his side;
It may be in the dark she heard him breathe
Before God woke him.  And she knew not light,
Nor life but as a voice that left his lips,
A warmth that clasped her; but the stars were out,
And she with wide child-eyes gazed up at them.

Haply she thought that always it was night;
Haply he, whispering to her in that reach
Of beauteous darkness, gave her unworn heart
A rumour of the dawn, and wakened it
To a trembling, and a wonder, and a want
Kin to his own; and as he longed to gaze
On his new fate, the gracious mystery
His wife, she may have longed, and felt not why,
After the light that never she had known.