White dawn, that tak’st the heaven with sweet surprise

of amorous artifice,

art thou the bearer of my perfect hour

divine, untrod,

from some forgotten window of Paradise

by mighty winds of God

blown down the world, before my haunted eyes

at length to flower?

Nay, virgin dawn, yet art thou all too known,

too crowded light

to take my boundless hour of flaming peace:

thou common dayspring cease;

and be there only night, the only night,

more than all other lone:

be the sole secret world

one rose unfurl’d,

and nought disturb its blossom’d peace intense,

that fills the living deep beyond all dreams of sense

enmesh’d in errorous multiplicity:

— let be

nought but her coming there:

what else were fair?

It asks no golden web, no censer-fire

to tell the dense incarnate mystery

where one delight is wed with one desire.

No leaves bestrow

that passage to the rose of all fulfill’d delight;

no silver trumpets blow

majestic rite,

but silence that is sigh’d from faery lands,

or wraps the feet of Beauty where she treads

dim fields of fading stars,

be round our meeting heads,

and seeking hands:
 

draw near, ye heavens, and be our chamber-bars;

and thou, maternal heart of holy night,

close watch, what hush’d and sacramental tide

a soul goes forth wide-eyed,

to meet the archangel-sword of loneliest delight