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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. So doth each age walk in the light beheld, Nor think on light, if it be light or no; Then comes the night to it, and in the night Eve. The God-given, the most beautiful Eve. And she is not seen for
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