Tread softly; we are on enchanted ground: One touch and every hidden thing lies bare, The deep sea sundered, suddenly unbound The awful thunders instinct in the air!
Oh, these we know; but what if we should break A secret spell as easily as glass, And stumble on their sleeping wrath and wake The armies and the million blades of grass?
And find more dread than whirlwinds round our head, The sweep of sparrows’ fierce, avenging wings, The anger of wild roses burning red, The terrible hate of earth’s most helpless things?
Who think of Charity as milky-eyed Know not of God’s great handmaid’s terrible name, Who comes in garments by the rainbow dyed, And crowned and winged and charioted with flame.
For Truth and Justice ride abroad with her, And Honour’s trumpets peal before her face: The high archangels stand and minister When she doth sit within her holy place.
None knoweth in the depth nor in the height What meaneth Charity, God’s secret word, But kiss her feet, and veil their burning sight Before her naked heart, her naked sword.
This hour God’s darkest mysteries Are plainer than the screeds of men, Tangled and false philosophies Fashioned by lying tongue and pen.
Plain as those bastions of cloud, Kind as the wide and kindly skies, And in the wild winds shouting loud The truths concealed from pedants’ eyes.
Pages which he may read who runs, Where no unlettered man may fail, Candid as are his noonday suns Familiar as his cheese and ale.
Him, Whom our eyes may see, our ears Hear, Whom our groping hands may touch-- Him we shall find ere many years, And finding fear not overmuch.
Who gave me simple things to keep,-- Laughter and love and memories, A farm, and meadows full of sheep, And quiet gardens full of bees, And those five gateways of the soul, Through which all good may come to me, Saints glorious of aureole, The flying thunders of the sea,
And feasts, and gracious hands of friends, And flowers good to stroke and smell; Oh, in the secret woods He sends The birds their trembling joys to tell!
He, too, is every day afresh Hid and revealed in bread and wine,-- The awful Word of God made flesh, Mortal commingling with divine!
Shadows and evil dreams o’erthrown With Dagon and the gods of scorn, Since Peace was in the silence blown On that dear night when God was born.