What Thing More Beautiful?

If there be some one thing more breautiful Than to lie with you in warmth and dark, I would fear that it might burn my soul away Before the purging purity of light Its perfection must diffuse. Your love is all the beauty I may stand. I carry what we make within this dark, Our human near-perfection, out into the light Each day; each moment as I stand Against the ravages of life I take away Those stains that fall diffuse Upon my careless soul, and mar the beautiful. It is the love of you that brings the light Into the confusion of my doubtings' dark Securing what fitful fate may bear away, That grants the strength to stand Opposed to all things foul, in alliance with the beautiful, Committed to a hope as noble as it is diffuse. There is a light that will not pierce the dark As we lie conjoined, our love diffuse About us as the night in little measures leaks away; It would but blind the eye, if seen, this sacred light Before which no ill thought may stand, This light that paints the unseen beautiful. All worthy things are also most diffuse As are the light, the dark, the beautiful. Their meanings advance, recede, then turn away From our poor apprehension's gropings dark, Even as our hope moves us to apply what light We may, to illumine that before which we stand. So in the end, my mind, struck dumb, turns away From the mystery, in consult to stand With the heart within the lovethick dark Where you lie near and shining without light Within that sphere of all good things diffuse About us, incomprehensible and beautiful. No; there can be to me no thing so beautiful As the light of you shining in unbroken dark: Your love is all the beauty I may stand.