To make a world all kinds aspire,
all kinds are needed, but there seems
one kindling only for the fire
whose heat can forge a world from dreams:
love—love of God, since God is love;
and love of man, since that we are;
and most, to make those love-tides move,
the sharper love that lovers share.
As water at the wedding-feast
endured a look and glowed to wine,
our two humanities, increased
by love to one, burn half-divine.
Behind the gold and frankincense
comes myrrh for our mortality,
but in this radiant hour we sense
all things we’re meant to do and be.
Through season and through circumstance
love will be changed but does remain,
may bear from wounds of spite and chance
the scars but be itself again.
Grey boughs beneath the perished leaf
are lovely as spring-green, red fall.
Time’s spiral course through joy and grief
exacts and justifies it all.
This riven world in which we live
one moment shows as whole and healed.
Accept the vision. Let it give
a form on which to mould and build.