Even as a hawk's in the large heaven's hollow <br />Are the great ways and gracious of your love, <br />No lesser heart or wearier wing may follow <br />In those' broad gyres where you rest and move. <br /> <br />Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely — <br />In the clear space between the sky and sea <br />Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only <br />Wander the sun-roads of Immensity. <br /> <br />Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion <br />Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne — <br />Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion, <br />Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn. <br /> <br />You are most beautiful; though it is given <br />But few to find you, fewer still to keep <br />Your high path through the solitude of heaven, <br />My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep. <br /> <br />Now toward the gold glow of the sunset's splendour <br />Veer your great vans — what haven in the west <br />Now draws you —while the mellowing light makes tender <br />Your dripping plumes — what islands of the blest? <br /> <br />Lift me, O lift me up to you forever, <br />Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might <br />Stoop to me here and save — O let me never <br />Sink from you now to share a lesser flight! <br /> <br />Even as I pray my wings of longing fail me, <br />And my heart flags. In solitude you move <br />Down the night's shore: not praying shall avail me <br />To lift me, fallen from your faultless love.<br /><br />John Hall Wheelock<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-lovely-one-2/
