Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/53

Of cloud and of change is the form of the fashion that
man may behold of it wrought:
Of iron and truth is the mystic mid altar, where worship
is none but of thought.
No prayer may go up to it, climbing as incense of gladness
or sorrow may climb:
No rapture of music may ruffle the silence that guards it,
and hears not of time.
As the winds of the wild blind ages alternate in passion
of light and of cloud,
So changes the shape of the veil that enshrouds it with
darkness and light for a shroud.
And the winds and the clouds and the suns fall silent,
and fade out of hearing or sight,
And the shrine stands fast and is changed not, whose
likeness was changed as a cloud in the night.

All the storms of time, and wrath of many winds, may
carve no trace
On the viewless altar, though the veil bear many a
name and face: