Safety - Evelyn Underhill

Most wonderful, most deep security
That circles in the soul at hours of pain.
When the assaulting harms
Of death and love and treachery set on,
When we must con
The dreadful lessons of mortality;
Then do we know the pressure of thine arms!
Held to thy heart
Shall we complain
That here we find our sharpest griefs again?
Within that wide and piteous embrace
All torment, as all rapture, finds a place.

Give me a part,
Exultant anguish cries aloud to thee.
In the sharp pangs of thy felicity —
The hard perpetual birth
Of beauty, music, mirth —
For I would share
E'en thy self-mergence in the world's despair.
Lifted with the long movement of thy breath.
That draws toward the secret sum of life
And outward rushes to the world of death,
Gladly I go
From utmost ecstasy to sorriest strife.
For well I know
It is the Heart of God that sways me so:
Thereon I rest, therewith I sweetly move,
Rocked by the rhythmic process of his love.

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Evelyn Underhill (1875 - 1941) England
Source: Theophanies; a book of verses, by Evelyn Underhill, J. M. Dent, 1916