Wakes within, the ancient mind
For a gloriousness defined: 
As she sought and knew your pleasure,—­
Wiling with a dancing measure,
Underneath your closed eyes
She calls the shapes of clouded skies;
White forms flushing hyacinthine
Twine in curvings labyrinthine;
Seem with godlike graceful feet,
For such mazy motion meet,
To press from air each lambent note,
On whose throbbing fire they float;
With an airy wishful gait
On each others’ motion wait;
Naked arms and vesture free
Fill up the dance of harmony.

Gone the measure polyhedral! 
Springs aloft a high cathedral;
Every arch, like praying arms
Upward flung in love’s alarms,
Knit by clasped hands o’erhead,
Heaves to heaven the weight of dread. 
Underneath thee, like a cloud,
Gathers music, dim not loud,
Swells thy bosom with devotion,
Floats thee like a wave of ocean;
Vanishes the pile away,—­
In heaven thou kneelest down to pray.

Let the sounds but reach thy heart,
Straight thyself magician art;
Walkest open-eyed through earth;
Seest wonders in their birth,
Whence they come and whither go;
Thou thyself exalted so,
Nature’s consciousness, whereby
On herself she turns her eye. 
Only heed thou worship God;
Else thou stalkest on thy sod,
Puppet-god of picture-world,
For thy foolish gaze unfurled;
Mirror-thing of things below thee. 
Thy own self can never know thee;
Not a high and holy actor;
A reflector, and refractor;
Helpless in thy gift of light,
Self-consuming into night.

Lasting yet the roseate glory! 
I must hasten with my story
Of the little room’s true features,
Seldom seen by mortal creatures;
Lest my prophet-vision fading
Leave me in the darkness wading. 
What are those upon the wall,
Ranged in rows symmetrical? 
They are books, an owl would say;
But the owl’s night is the day: 
Of these too, if you have patience,
I can give you revelations: 
Through the walls of Time and Sight,
Doors they are to the Infinite;
Through the limits that embrace us,
Openings to the eternal spaces,
Round us all the noisy day,
Full of silences alway;
Round us all the darksome night,
Ever full of awful light: 
And, though closed, may still remind us
There is mystery behind us.

That, my friend?  Now, it is curious,
You should hit upon the spurious! 
’Tis a blind, a painted door: 
Knock at it for evermore,
Never vision it affords
But its panelled gilded boards;
Behind it lieth nought at all,
But the limy, webby wall. 
Oh no, not a painted block—­
Not the less a printed mock;
A book, ’tis true; no whit the more
A revealing out-going door. 
There are two or three such books
For a while in others’ nooks;
Where they should no longer be,
But for reasons known to me.