the sun fills the ocean of the morning air with light,
every silver drop of living dew is sparkling and bright,
the warmth and the tenderness of heaven’s brilliant rays
gently piercing the chilly mist and gilding the haze.
and there, where a spider has spun so perfectly
from petal’s edge to tip of thorn its jewelled filagree,
we’d almost lament the spider’s secret will achieved:
that a midge should blunder in and break the evanescent weave!
yet life’s steady purpose nature always does fulfil;
there’ll be glistening webs tomorrow in accord with nature’s will,
and dew trembling bright on every silken petal’s tip,
every scintillating instant like a nectar drop to sip.
alas for the mortal the deeply wounded flesh!
in the fabric of our being how we misconstrue the mesh!
the false weft, the knotted warp, the disengaged sley
how they mar our best designs and steal the loveliness away!
yet soon will the weaver who dreamed the web we weave
life’s perfect nature manifest, life’s image pure achieve.
so spin yarns of sunshine and weave strands strung with dew
but the pain and toil of work and death are woven in there too.
and when, having worked so well our work’s reward is won
in the winning is that silver pure and virgin web undone
yet deep in that inward dawn where light is yet unknown
is the finer work, more perfect still eternally our own.


