THE SLUMBERER
by: Elsa Barker (1869-1954)
- THOU
mysterious One, lying asleep
- Within the lonely chamber of my soul!
- Thou art my lifes true goal,
- Thine is the only altar that I keep.
- Rapt in the contemplation of thy repose,
- I see in thy still face that Mystic Rose
- Whose perfume is my souls imaginings,
- And Beauty at whose awesomeness I weep
- With over-plenitude of ecstasy.
- Thy slumber is the great world-mystery--
- The paradigm of all the latent things
- That in their destined hour Time magnifies:
- Its emblems are the intimate hush that lies
- Over the moonlit lake;
- The wonder and the ache
- Of unborn love that trembles in its sleep;
- The hope that thrills the heavy earth
- With presage of becoming, and vast birth;
- The secret of the caverns of the deep.
"The Slumberer" is reprinted
from The Oxford book of English mystical verse. Ed. D.H.S.
Nicholson. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
MORE
POEMS BY ELSA BARKER |
|