De Profundis

Too long, alas, too long
My patient heart endures
This deep and desperate wrong—
To walk on fallen ways afar from yours.

O pain that loses not
Its sharp and ancient sting!
O rapture unforgot
Whereof some dark tomorrow yet shall sing!

O spirit, blood and bone
Whose deepening voices cry
She is mine own, mine own,
Though earth and all the ascendant spheres deny:

For her I have arisen
From many a broken tomb,
From out the darkling prison
Of sunken worlds and avatars of doom.

For her I bear the Flame
Replenished from of yore—
Unquenchably the same
Like the great fire within the planet's core.

O Flame that shall not fail
In voids of time and space,
At last you shall avail
To light my feet to her abiding-place.