The Slumberer
by Elsa Barker. Reprinted from The Oxford book of English mystical verse. Ed. D.H.S. Nicholson. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917..
OTHOU mysterious One, lying asleep
Within the lonely chamber of my soul!
Thou art my life’s 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 soul’s 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.
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