This is my prayer, that I shall never find
The secret of thy name;
Never attain to bind
The zone of thought about thy formless flame.
Grant me the grace that I may never hear
The one resolving chord
Which shall at last make clear
The deep harmonic mystery of my Lord.
Shield thou my sense, that I may never know
All that thy love can be;
Let not my probing go
To the dread heart of thy divinity.
Wrapped in thy quiet, I do but ask to taste
The sweetness of that night;
Lost in thy trackless waste,
There shall the soul find fulhead of delight.
The anguish of thy sacred dark caress,
Thy love beyond our span,
Self’s loss in this excess:
These be the torment and joy of man.