Anima Mundi
Let all things vanish, if but you remain;
For if you stay, beloved, what is gone?
Yet, should you go, all permanence is vain,
And all the piled abundance is as none.
With you beside me in the desert sand,
Your smile upon me, and on mine your hand,
Oases green arise, and camel-bells;
For in the long adventure of your eyes
Are all the wandering ways to Paradise.
Existence, in your being, comes and goes;
What were the garden, love, without the rose?
In vain were ears to hear,
And eyes in vain,
Lacking your ordered music, sphere to sphere,
Blind, should your beauty blossom not again.
The pulse that shakes the world with rhythmic beat
Is but the passing of your little feet;
And all the singing vast of all the seas,
Down from the pole
To the Hesperides,
Is but the praying echo of your soul.
Therefore, beloved, know that this is true—
The world exists and vanishes in you!
Tis not a lover’s fancy; ask the sky
If all its stars depend not, even as I,
Upon your eyelids, when they open or close;
And let the garden answer with the rose.
