AISHAH SHECHINAH
by: Robert Stephen Hawker
(1803-1875)
- SHAPE,
like folded light, embodied air,
- Yet wreathed with flesh, and warm:
- All that of heaven is feminine and fair,
- Moulded in visible form,
-
- She stood, the Lady Shechinah of earth,
- A chancel for the sky:
- Where woke, to breath and beauty, Gods own Birth,
- For men to see Him by.
-
- Round her, too pure to mingle with the day,
- Light, that was life, abode;
- Folded within her fibres meekly lay
- The link of boundless God.
-
- So linked, so blent, that when, with pulse fulfilled,
- Moved but that Infant Hand,
- Far, far away, His conscious Godhead thrilled,
- And stars might understand.
-
- Lo! where they pause, with inter-gathering rest,
- The Threefold, and the One;
- And lo, He binds them to her orient breast,
- His manhood girded on.
-
- The zone, where two glad worlds for ever meet,
- Beneath that bosom ran:
- Deep in that womb the conquering Paraclete
- Smote Godhead on to man.
-
- Sole scene among the stars, where, yearning, glide
- The Threefold and the One;
- Her God upon her lap, the Virgin Bride,
- Her awful Child, her Son!
"Aishah Shechinah" is
reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.
Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
MORE POEMS BY ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER |
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