Amen, the father smiled.
How love’s a cajoler in you!
No sooner said than lo
the universe sprang to view.

There was a home for the bride!
a pleasure-house cunningly made!
quarters above and below!
two great levels arrayed!

The lower boldly baroque,
a maze of infinite ways.
The upper thrilling and strange:
diamond-dust in a blaze!

To show how noble a groom
(should the bride have a shadow of doubt)
in choirs the father banked
flights of angels about.

Apartments close to the ground
he marked for the race of man-
having fewer pretensions to rise,
what in the dust began.

Though the palace and all of its gear
the father chose to divide,
they are body: as single a body
as the body itself of the bride.

It was one he loved, that lover:
he had eyes for one.
Oh the angels called him truelove
close to their jubilant sun!

Truelove, the earthlings murmured
in hope (with faith for root).
The groom saw, in time future,
radiant changes wrought.

He vowed their meagre condition
would be mended: amended to
so that none till time had an ending
would find a gibe to throw.

Said he would share their station;
said he would breathe their breath;
mingle in all their dealings;
said he would die the death;

God would be man forever;
man would be God-in-man;
weather our hurlyburly,
fed from trencher and can!

Faithful forever, God said;
vowed to be still the same
till the world that trickles away like sand
flare in a waste of flame.

Something to sing for, that day!
never a dying fall!
He is the bride’s best wisdom—
all of her all-in-all.

Limbs by the world far scattered
whole and together awake;
these are his truelove’s body;
these will the lover take

into his two arms, soft oh soft,
confiding an idyll of love,
holding her close, to lift her
high to the father above,

there to be rapt as God is,
seized with the same delight-
for even as father and son
and the third in his outward flight

one in the other endure,
so with the fond and fair-
caught into God’s great being,
breathing his very air!