[BNP/E3, 16A – 51]

71

The Abyss

Between me and my consciousness

Is an abyss

At whose invisible bottom runs

The noise of a stream far from suns,

Whose very sound is dark and cold ­-

     Ay, on some skin of our soul's deeming,

Cold and dark and terribly old,

     Itself, and not in its told seeming.

My hearing has become my seeing

     Of that placelessly sunken stream.

Its noiseless noise is ever freeing

     My thought from my thought's power to dream.

Some dread reality belongs

To that stream of mute, abstract songs

That speak of no reality

But of its going to no sea.

Lo! with the eyes of my dreamed hearing

I hear the unseen river bearing

Along to where it goes not to

All things my thought is made of­ - Thought

Itself, and the World, and God, who

     On that impossible stream float.

Ay, the ideas of God, of World,

     Of Myself and of Mystery,

As from some unknown rampart hurled,

     Go down with that stream to that sea

It has not and shall never reach

     And belong to its night‑bound motion.

Yet oh for that sun on the beach

     Of that unattainable ocean!