324. God

ONCE, long before the birth of time, a storm

Of white desire, by its own ardour hurled,

Flashed out of infinite Desire, took form,

Strove, won, survived: and God became the world.

Next, some internal force began to move

Within the bosom of that latest earth:

The spirit of an elemental love

Stirred outward from itself, and God was birth.

Then outward, upward, with heroic thew,

Savage from young and bursting blood of life,

Desire took form, and conquered, and anew

Strove, conquered, and took form: and God was strife

Thus, like a comet, fiery flight on flight;

Flash upon flash, and purple morn on morn:

But always out of agony—delight;

And out of death—God evermore reborn,

Till, waxing fair and subtle and supreme,

Desiring his own spirit to possess,

Man of the bright eyes and the ardent dream

Saw paradise, and God was consciousness.

He is that one Desire, that life, that breath,

That Soul which, with infinity of pain,

Passes through revelation and through death

Onward and upward to itself again.

Out of the lives of heroes and their deeds,

Out of the miracle of human thought,

Out of the songs of singers, God proceeds;

And of the soul of them his Soul is wrought.

Nothing is lost: all that is dreamed or done

Passes unaltered the eternal way,

Immerging in the everlasting One,

Who was the dayspring and who is the day.