The Rose-Window

In there: their paws with soundless, lazy steps
create in stillness a confusing stir;
and then how suddenly on one of the cats
your glance moves to and fro, and then aware,
compellingly in her great eyes she takes
the glance, which, as by a maelstrom caught fast,
swims for a little while, and then–sinks,
and of itself has no more consciousness:
when these eyes, which are seemingly at rest,
open, and, as with a roar, together close,
drawing the gaze into the very blood-
so out of darkness once in times long past
the great Cathedral’s glowing window-rose
thus seized a heart and drew it unto God.