A woman sat in clear and crystal light:
Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,
Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun.
An energy of the triune Infinite,
In a measureless Reality she dwelt.
A flame of radiant happiness she was born,
And surely will that flame set earth alight.
There had she grown to the stature of her spirit:
The genius of titanic silences
Steeping her soul in its wide loneliness
Had shown to her her self's bare reality
And mated her with her environment.
Its solitude greatened her human hours
With a background of the eternal and unique.
All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven.
Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will.
Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.
As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault.
A wide self-giving was her native act;
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
And gave a sense as of a greatened world:
Her kindly care was sweet temperate sun,
Her high passion a blue heaven's equipoise.
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her inward help unbarred a gate of heaven;
Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.
Admired, unsought, intangible to the grasp
Her beauty and flaming strength were seen after
Like lightning playing with the fallen day.
A glory unapproachably divine.
No equal heart came close to join her heart,
No transient earthly love assailed her calm,
No hero passion had the strength to seize;
No eyes demanded her replying eyes.
A power within her awed the imperfect flesh.
At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire.
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
