Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TRANSCENDENT LOVE, by CHARLES V. H. ROBERTS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TRANSCENDENT LOVE, by                    
First Line: In all the world, the greatest thing is love
Last Line: By the sound in trumpet call—transcendent love.
Subject(s): Happiness; Love - Nature Of; Joy; Delight


In all the world, the greatest thing is Love,
Through shadowed sorrow to eternity—
A touch of more that is, and e'er shall be,
At whose Beyond we may not know, but feel
Her vestal guardians of Happiness,
Jeweled arms and cymbals held aloft
As pagan spirits on a fairy craft,
Sail crests of seas, where passions ebb and flow,
In rhythmic tumult of unconscious grace.

Truth drops her veil before the wand of Love,
As the flower from silken petal breaketh forth
In dawning glow and veins of liquid fire,
Magic, amethystine, rich and deep,
In forest aisles and dancing disks of sunlight:
Then whirlwinds gulf into a quietude,
Upon sweet undercurrents, mystic, thin,
That bid all Nature from her sleep awake,
To sing the songs which only Love can sing.

By disappointed faith and fortune's wrong,
I drop anon into the ebon Past,
O'er some far silent sea I never knew
To roofs in Nineveh and Babylon.
Above the stars droop jewel-wise, as velvet
Water lilies breathe their argent raptures
In the night. A-near the sands of a desert
Whirl into the entrance of my tent
Delirious mirage of pagan Love.

I feel her black curls touch me—scented zephyrs
O'er my soul, reversing fate on fragrant
Wings. Chaldeans girdled in vermilion—
Eternal spirit of the woman—in rippling
Laughter overflow and wound each other
Unaware. Night to dawn lights lengthen—
Concubines in robes of multicolor,
Eyes all lustrous in consuming gaze,
Quaff deeply in this ancient Cup of Bliss.

If anything be greater than the gods,
'Tis Love! She dwells in Eden still, where ages
Of Eastern Passion made her hue, and taintless
Lips to kiss the magic hours of
All Time—its hurricanes and spectres so
Perplexed adown the darkest centuries,
To the Asiatic dawn on Calvary.

Awakened now, her angels' wings are seen
Warm, sunburnt, beneath the Present skies,
In touch of which the purest spirits meet
And Heaven itself, with all its joys brought near
By the sound in trumpet call—Transcendent Love.





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