Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06

She had brought with her into the human form,

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.

Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears

Rejected the undying rapture’s boon:

Offered to the daughter of infinity

Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,

Hoping her greater being to implant

And in their body’s lives acclimatise

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:

It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;

It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

It trembles at its naked power of Truth

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,

It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:

Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;

It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,

Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,

The cross their payment for the crown they gave,

Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

A fire has come and touched men’s hearts and gone;

A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.