Revelation by Sir Edmund Gosse
b"Gosse read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------\\n\\n Revelation \\nby Sir Edmund Gosse (1849\\u20131928)\\n\\nInto the silver night\\n She brought with her pale hand\\n The topaz lanthorn-light,\\n And darted splendour o'er the land;\\n Around her in a band,\\nRingstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,\\n And flapping with their mad wings, fann'd\\nThe flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.\\n Behind the thorny pink\\n Close wall of blossom'd may,\\n I gazed thro' one green chink\\n And saw no more than thousands may,\\u2014\\n Saw sweetness, tender and gay,\\u2014\\nSaw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry,\\n Saw braided locks more dark than bay,\\nAnd flashing eyes decorous, pure, and merry.\\n\\n With food for furry friends\\n She pass'd, her lamp and she,\\n Till eaves and gable-ends\\n Hid all that saffron sheen from me:\\n Around my rosy tree\\nOnce more the silver-starry night was shining,\\n With depths of heaven, dewy and free,\\nAnd crystals of a carven moon declining.\\n\\n Alas! for him who dwells\\n In frigid air of thought,\\n When warmer light dispels\\n The frozen calm his spirit sought;\\n By life too lately taught\\nHe sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing;\\n Reels from the joy experience brought,\\nAnd dares not clutch what Love was half revealing."