Helen Gray Cone

The Glorious Company

  "Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
    Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
  Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
    Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?

  "Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
    Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press
  Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
    Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!"

  Lo, the Light! (they answer) O the pure,
        the pulsing Light,
    Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
  Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
    Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!

  "O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
    Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!—
  Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
    Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!"