Earth’s Complines

Before the feet of the dew
There came a call I knew,
Luring me into the garden
Where the tall white lilies grew.

I stood in the dusk between
The companies of green,
O’er whose aerial ranks
The lilies rose serene.

And the breathing air was stirred
By an unremembered word,
Soft, incommunicable--
And wings not of a bird.

I heard the spent blooms sighing,
The expectant buds replying;
I felt the life of the leaves,
Ephemeral, yet undying.

The spirits of earth were there,
Thronging the shadowed air,
Serving among the lilies,
In an ecstasy of prayer.

Their speech I could not tell;
But the sap in each green cell,
And the pure initiate petals,
They knew that language well.

I felt the soul of the trees--
Of the white, eternal seas--
Of the flickering bats and night-moths
And my own soul kin to these.

And a spell came out of space
From the light of its starry place,
And I saw in the deep of my heart
The image of God’s face.