Speaking Stillness in the Rose-Flushed-Snow

"The Creed of My Heart"

(by Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes)

A FLAME in my heart is kindled by the might of the morns pure breath;

A passion beyond all passion; a faith that eclipses faith;

A joy that is more than gladness; a hope that outsoars desire;

A love that consumes and quickens; a soul-transfiguring fire.

My life is possessed and mastered: my heart is inspired and filled.

All other visions have faded: all other voices are stilled.

My doubts are vainer than shadows: my fears are idler than dreams:

They vanish like breaking bubbles, those old soul-torturing themes.

The riddles of life are cancelled, the problems that bred despair:

I cannot guess them or solve them, but I know that they are not there.

They are past, they are all forgotten, the breeze has blown them away;

For lifes inscrutable meaning is clear as the dawn of day.

It is there-the secret of Nature-there in the mornings glow;

There in the speaking stillness; there in the rose-flushed snow.

It is here in the joy and rapture; here in my pulsing breast:

I feel what has neer been spoken: I know what has neer been guessed.

The rose-lit clouds of morning; the sun-kissed mountain heights;

The orient streaks and flushes; the mingling shadows and lights;

The flow of the lonely river; the voice of its distant stream;

The mists that rise from the meadows, lit up by the suns first beam;-

They mingle and melt as I watch them; melt and mingle and die.

The land is one with the water: the earth is one with the sky.

The parts are as parts no longer: Nature is All and One:

Her life is achieved, completed: her days of waiting are done

I breathe the breath of the morning. I am one with the one World-Soul.

I live my own life no longer, but the life of the living Whole.

I am more than self: I am selfless: I am more than self: I am I.

I have found the springs of my being in the flush of the eastern sky.

I-the true self, the spirit, the self that is born of death-

I have found the flame of my being in the morns ambrosial breath.

I lose my life for a season: I lose it beyond recall:

But I find it renewed, rekindled, in the life of the One, the All.

I look not forward or backward: the abysses of time are nought.

From pole to pole of the heavens I pass in a flash of thought.

I clasp the world to my bosom: I feel its pulse in my breast,-

The pulse of measureless motion, the pulse of fathomless rest.

Is it motion or rest that thrills me? Is it lightning or moonlit peace?

Am I freer than waves of ether, or prisoned beyond release?

I know not; but through my spirit, within me, around, above,

The world-wide river is streaming, the river of life and love.

Silent, serene, eternal, passionless, perfect, pure;-

I may not measure its windings, but I know that its aim is sure.

In its purity seethes all passion: in its silence resounds all song:

Its strength is builded of weakness: its right is woven of wrong.

I am borne afar on its bosom; yet its source and its goal are mine,

From the sacred springs of Creation to the ocean of love Divine.

I have ceased to think or to reason: there is nothing to ponder or prove:

I hope, I believe no longer: I am lost in a dream of love.