The Inner Light

Lo, if some pen should write upon your rafter,
Mene and Mene in the folds of flame,

Think you could any memories thereafter
Wholly retrace the couplet as it came?

Lo, if some strange, intelligible thunder
Sang to the earth the secret of a star,

Scarce could ye catch, for terror and for wonder,
Shreds of the story that was pealed so far.

Scarcely I catch the words of His revealing,
Hardly I hear Him, dimly understand,

Only the Power that is within me pealing
Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand.

Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny:

Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.

Rather the earth shall doubt when her retrieving
Pours in the rain and rushes from the sod,

Rather than he for whom the great conceiving
Stirs in his soul to quicken into God.

Ay, though thou then shouldst strike from him his glory,
Blind and tormented, maddened and alone,

Even on the cross would he maintain his story,
Yes, and in hell would whisper, I have known.

F.W.H. Myers, 1843-1901