The word is brief --
  No more than breath --
But written here
  It outlasts death.

Oh give me truth,
  And give me song;
Then bid me sing,
  My whole life long.

From luminous mist I mold your face
And every lovely line retrace.

I shape your form from starry light
And lilies fragrant in the night.

I hew your fire from moonlit trail
And give you being subtle and frail

That wind which drifts away to  ...  sea
May bring your incense back to me.

The word is brief --
  No more than breath --
But written here
  It outlasts death.

Oh give me truth,
  And give me song;
Then bid me sing,
  My whole life long.

When the spring wind stirred,
  And the moon shone white;
When the world lay as broad
  As a gull in flight,

I could recall the night --
  I could see the hill
Where you spoke the words,
  And my heart stopped still.

But now winter clicks
  Like a metronome,
And ghosts skim the sky
  On clouds like foam.

From luminous mist I mold your face
And every lovely line retrace.

I shape your form from starry light
And lilies fragrant in the night.

I hew your fire from moonlit trail
And give you being subtle and frail

That wind which drifts away to  ...  sea
May bring your incense back to me.

The need is now for quiet things:
The gleaming star, the silent pool,
The music of the Wind-stirred trees,
The peace of the heart's still vestibule.

Take strength from heaven's sturdy dome,
Set firm your feet on the warming sod,
Open your soul to Beauty's voice.
Listen! Listen!... and call it GOD!

Ever I hear the voice of Beauty cry
As night draws close the drapery of the day;
Ever I see her emblem on the sky
A flaming sign across the starry way.
Her fragrance ever keeps me to the trail
I follow in the spring through freshened air;
Her image lies along the whitened sail
And on the shoreward rocks left brown and bare.
I hear her as across the land I stray
Or follow by the ever moving sea;
On high and lonely hills I see the play
Her shadow casts on wave and cloud and tree.
On Beauty's being all my creed is pinned:
Her every step is music in the wind.