Poem by Christopher Pearse Cranch

Gnosis

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
    Feeling deeper than all thought: 
Souls to souls never can teach
    What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;
    Man by man was never seen; 
All our deep communing fails
    To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;
    Mind with mind did never meet; 
We are columns left alone
    Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
    Far apart though seeming near, 
In our light we scattered lie;
    All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company
    But a babbling summer stream? 
What our wise philosophy
    But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the Sun of Love
    Melts the scattered stars of thought, 
Only when we live above
    What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed
    By the Fount which gave them birth, 
And by inspiration led
    Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,
    Swelling till they meet and run, 
Shall all be absorbed again,
    Melting, flowing, into one.

1. A Night-Picture
2. A Word to Philosophers
3. Sonnet 39. Bayard Taylor
4. The Pines and the Sea
5. In the Forest of Fontainebleau

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