Gnosis

Souls to souls can never teach

    What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils:

    Man by man was never seen:

All our deep communing fails

    To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known:

    Mind with mind did never meet:

We are columns left alone,

    Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars the gem the sky,

    Far apart, though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie;

    All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

    But a babbling summer stream?

What our wise philosophy

    But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the Sun of Love

    Melts the scattered stars of thought;

Only when we live above

    What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

    By the Fount which gave them birth,

And by inspiration led,

    Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,

    Swelling till they meet and run,

Shall be all absorbed again,

    Melting, flowing into one.