This is my prayer, that I shall never find

The secret of thy name;

Never attain to bind

The zone of thought about thy formless flame.

Grant me the grace that I may never hear

The one resolving chord

Which shall at last make clear

The deep harmonic mystery of my Lord.

Shield thou my sense, that I may never know

All that thy love can be;

Let not my probing go

To the dread heart of thy divinity.

Wrapped in thy quiet, I do but ask to taste

The sweetness of that night;

Lost in thy trackless waste,

There shall the soul find fulhead of delight.

The anguish of thy sacred dark caress,

Thy love beyond our span,

Self’s loss in this excess:

These be the torment and joy of man.