BLESSING

...the continual dew of Thy blessing...
(the Book of Common Prayer)

Not only for the small blind eyes of dew,
though ever-waking, nor the rainbow's promise,
although a giant image of those waters;
nor the uncovenanted lights that wash
dark and the day in spectra, though unbounded:
not thankfulness for these alone, by sight
or symbol; but for laws that gave us them.

All the great shining of so many mercies
impurely reaches us through prism and lens
of angel-flesh or blood-of-clouds or sky-dust:
blessing is mediate, screened by elements,
flying the lanes of sense, empowered by sense:
if light is pure, it is invisible
(the dark of God): light is the eye that sees.

Blessing is mediate, even that of love:
our thicker flesh, our living dust, our white
and crimson distillations, are the world
by which it acts, unguessed without them; love
enthroned in secrecy, but love which is
a peacock wheel of stars, a moon, a morning,
a rainbow peace, and a continual dew.