(S 1)
But mid this world, these hearts that answered her call,
None could stand up her equal and her mate.
(S 2)
In vain she stooped to equal them with her heights,
Too pure that air was for small souls to breathe.
(S 3)
245 These comrade selves to raise to her own wide breadths
Her heart desired and fill with her own power
That a diviner Force might enter life,
A breath of Godhead greaten human time.
(S 4)
Although she leaned down to their littleness
250 Covering their lives with her strong passionate hands
And knew by sympathy their needs and wants
And dived in the shallow wave-depths of their lives
And met and shared their heart-beats of grief and joy
And bent to heal their sorrow and their pride,
255 Lavishing the might that was hers on her lone peak
To lift to it their aspiration’s cry,
And though she drew their souls into her vast
And surrounded with the silence of her deeps
And held as the great Mother holds her own,
260 Only her earthly surface bore their charge
And mixed its fire with their mortality:
Her greater self lived sole, unclaimed, within.
(S 5)
Oftener in dumb Nature’s stir and peace
A nearness she could feel serenely one;
265 The Force in her drew earth’s subhuman broods;
And to her spirit’s large and free delight
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
(S 6)
They answered to her with the simple heart.
(S 7)
270 In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
It knows but turns away from divine Light
Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall.
(S 8)
Among the many who came drawn to her
Nowhere she found her partner of high tasks,
275 The comrade of her soul, her other self
Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one.
(S 9)
Some near approached, were touched, caught fire, then failed,
Too great was her demand, too pure her force.
(S 10)
Thus lighting earth around her like a sun,
280 Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof,
A distance severed her from those most close.
(S 11)
Puissant, apart her soul as the gods live.