RADIANT BEING
So mused a traveler on the earthly plane
Being in himself a type of all mankind.
For aspirations dim at first possessed
Him only, rising vaguely in his dreams,
Till in ripe years his early musings changed
To inspiration and the light of the soul,
Then vision came, and in the light he saw
What he had hoped now openly revealed;
And much besides - the inmost soul of things
,And "beauty" as the crown of life itself,
Ineffable, transcending mortal form;
For robed in light, no longer fantasy,
Before his gaze the true "ideal" stood,
Sublimely fair, beyond conception, clothed
In beauty and divinest symmetry.
Yet pined he not like him of Patmos when
In dreaming ecstasy upon the hills
Beneath the moon he saw his love unveiled;
for well he knew the crowning of his life
Was in that vision and would be fulfilled.
Nay, was fulfilled, for henceforth by his side
A radiant being stood, his guiding light
And polar star, that as a magnet held
Him in the hold of every-during love!
- William Sharpe, The Dual Image, quoted in Masters of British Literature, Volume B (Damrosch Series)
Lo!
All sorrow finished - the deep, deep ocean of joy
opening within - the surface sparkling.
The myriad-formed disclosed, each one and all, all things
that are, transfigured -
Being filled with joy, hardly touching the ground, reaching
cross-shaped with outstretched arms to the stars,
along the mountains and the forests, habitation of
innumerable creatures, singing joy unending -
As the sun on a dull morning breaking through the clouds -
so from behind the sun another sun, from within the
body another body - these shattered falling -
Lo! now at last or yet awhile in due time to behold that
which ye have so long sought -
O eyes, no wonder you are intent.
- Edward Carpenter, from Towards Democracy
