The Secret

One thing in all things have I seen:         One thought has haunted earth and air;     Clangour and silence both have been         Its palace chambers.    Everywhere          I saw the mystic vision flow,         And live in men, and woods, and streams,     Until I could no longer know         The dream of life from my own dreams.          Sometimes it rose like fire in me,         Within the depths of my own mind,     And spreading to infinity,         It took the voices of the wind.          It scrawled the human mystery,         Dim heraldry--on light and air;     Wavering along the starry sea,         I saw the flying vision there.          Each fire that in God's temple lit         Burns fierce before the inner shrine,     Dimmed as my fire grew near to it,         And darkened at the light of mine.          At last, at last, the meaning caught:         When spirit wears its diadem,     It shakes its wondrous plumes of thought,         And trails the stars along with them. --April 15, 1894