Almighty wondrous everlasting

      Whether in a cradle of astral whirlfire

      Or globed in a piercing star thou slumb’rest

      The impassive body of God:

      Thou deep i’ the core of earth—Almighty!—

      From numbing stress and gloom profound

      Madest escape in life desirous

      To embroider her thin-spun robe.

      ’Twas down in a wood—they tell—

      In a running water thou sawest thyself

      Or leaning over a pool: The sedges

      Were twinn’d at the mirror’s brim

      The sky was there and the trees—Almighty!—

      A bird of a bird and white clouds floating

      And seeing thou knewest thine own image

      To love it beyond all else.

      Then wondering didst thou speak

      Of beauty and wisdom of art and worship

      Didst build the fanes of Zeus and Apollo

      The high cathedrals of Christ.

      All that we love is thine—Almighty!—

      Heart-felt music and lyric song

      Language the eager grasp of knowledge

      All that we think is thine.

      But whence?—Beauteous everlasting!—

      Whence and whither? Hast thou mistaken?

      Or dost forget? Look again! Thou seest

      A shadow and not thyself.

      Goddess azure-mantled and aureoled

      That standing barefoot upon the moon

      Or throned as a Queen of the earth

      Tranquilly smilest to hold

      The Child-god in thine arms,

      Whence thy glory? Art not she

      The country maiden of Galilee

      Simple in dowerless poverty

      Who from humble cradle to grave

      Hadst no thought of this wonder?

      When to man dull of heart

      Dawn’d at length graciously

      Thy might of Motherhood

      The starry Truth beam’d on his home;

      Then with insight exalted he gave thee

      The trappings—Lady—wherewith his art

      Delighteth to picture his spirit to sense

      And that grace is immortal.

      Fount of creative Love

      Mother of the Word eternal

      Atoning man with God:

      Who set thee apart as a garden enclosed

      From Nature’s all-producing wilds

      To rear the richest fruit o’ the Life

      Ever continuing out from Him

      Urgent since the beginning.

      Behold! Man setteth thine image in the height of Heaven

      And hallowing his untemper’d love

      Crowneth and throneth thee ador’d

      (Tranquilly joyous to hold

      The man-child in thine arms)

      God-like apart from conflict to save thee

      To guard thy weak caressive beauty

      With incontaminate jewels of soul

      Courage, patience, and self-devotion:

      All this glory he gave thee.

      Secret and slow is Nature

      Imperceptibly moving

      With surely determinate aim:

      To woman it fell to be early in prime

      Ready to labour, mould, and cherish

      The delicate head of all Production

      The wistful late-maturing boy

      Who made Knowing of Being.

      Therefore art thou ador’d

      Mother of God in man

      Naturing nurse of power:

      They who adore not thee shall perish

      But thou shalt keep thy path of joy

      Envied of Angels because the All-father

      Call’d thee to mother his nascent Word

      And complete the creation.

      Thro’ innocent eyes at the world awond’ring

      Nothing spake to me more superbly

      Than the round bastion of Windsor’s wall

      That warding the Castle’s southern angle

      An old inheritor of Norman prowess

      Was call’d by the folk the Curfew Tow’r.

      Above the masonry’s rugged courses

      A turreted clock of Caroline fashion

      Told time to the town in black and gold.

      It charmed the hearts of Henry’s scholars

      As kingly a mentor of English story

      As Homer’s poem is of Ilion:

      Nor e’er in the landscape look’d it fairer

      Than when we saw its white bulk halo’d

      In a lattice of slender scaffoldings.

      Month by month on the airy platforms

      Workmen labour’d hacking and hoisting

      Till again the tower was stript to the sun:

      The old tow’r? Nay a new tow’r stood there

      From footing to battlemented skyline

      And topt with a cap the slice of a cone

      Archæologic and counterfeited

      The smoothest thing in all the high-street

      As Eton scholars to-day may see:

      They—wherever else they find their wonder

      And feed their boyhood on Time’s enchantment—

      See never the Tow’r that spoke to me.

      Sweet