The Prince of Darkness, who by God's decree
From Heaven's gate was hurled, that he might be
Reserved for darkness unredeemedly,
Our sunlit world approached, since there should be
The field of his remorseless enmity.
Created beauty, grace and harmony
And faultless generation would he see
In that Divine profusion, endlessly
Fruition working - through all time to be
The faithful witness to Benignity.
Sends forth the Sun the wonder-working Ray:
To gems the dewdrop turns; night turns to day:
It smiles upon the flowers, or stops mid-way
On lofty pine, or on the mountain way,
Or stoops to kiss the babbling brooklet's spray.
O blessed Light - Smile of the Trinity;
O mirrored Witness to the One in Three:
Blessed be the mountain path, the forest tree,
And every drop of dew reflecting thee -
Yet blessed more the heart and eyes that see.
To darkened eye that ever closed must be,
Light streams in vain. There lies no faculty
For beauty, grace, or blended harmony
In form and colour. Darkness to dark will be
The mirror of its own deformity.
But for the Prince of Darkness - darkness he -
What could this life of light and beauty be,
Whose eye itself had lost its clarity?
Had lost that Light to which this light would be
But a bright shadow? Lost, ah, lost is he.
Alone may pride and hate and anarchy
Fill up the measure of his entity.
Can he not reign in Light? Then reign will he
Over the ruins of Humanity -
Over the outcasts from God's Clemency.
- text taken from Mary: The Perfect Woman, by Emily Mary Shapcote