The very limits of the law
That hath no bounds: beheld the bliss
Of that first wonder of the kiss
In its true self: how very love
Is God, and hath its substance of
Pure light: and how love hath its cause
Beyond religions, worlds, and laws ;
Is in itself the first: and moves
All evolution, and disproves
God in affirming God: all this
In that one rapture of the kiss
I knew, and all creation’s pain
Fell into nothing in my brain,
As I, remaining man, involved
All life’s true purpose, and dissolved
The phantoms (of itself create)
In a mysterious sweet state,
Wherein some tune began to move
Whose likeness and whose life was love.
Roll, strong life-current of these very veins,
Into my lover’s soul, my soul that is!
Thrill, mighty life of nerves, exultant strains
Triumphant of all music in a kiss !
Fade! fade! O strenuous sense
Into the soul intense
Of life beyond your weak imagining!
And, O thou thought, dissever
Thy airy life for ever
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