Unum est Necessarium
I thought that I was ravished to a height
Whence earth was lost with all I once had known;
I saw the stars flash dwindling thro' the night,
Like sparklets from a blackening yule-log thrown;
And nothing else remain 'd of all that is
Save the essential life of souls alone.
Behold! Like flowers of light against the abyss
I watched them move and shine — how soft and clear!
With trailing rays of light, with streams of bliss.
With haloes of a heavenly atmosphere :
Like flowers at dusk, when first the froth and bloom
Of blond immense chrysanthemums appear
To shake a loose, fresh aureole o'er the gloom
(If human sense and common vision might
Divine the splendours of that Upper Room
Where motion, joy, and life are one with light)—
Like flowers made meteors, then, or meteors flowers,
The radiant spirits circled holy-bright.
And lo! I heard a voice from Heaven, not ours,
"This is the Race," it cried, " this is the Race
Of Radiating Souls, the large in heart,
And where they circle is a holy place!
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