Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
Robert Stephen Hawker (18031875)81. Aishah Shechinah
A
Yet wreathed with flesh, and warm:
All that of heaven is feminine and fair,
Moulded in visible form,
A chancel for the sky:
Where woke, to breath and beauty, God’s own Birth,
For men to see Him by.
Light, that was life, abode;
Folded within her fibres meekly lay
The link of boundless God.
Moved but that Infant Hand,
Far, far away, His conscious Godhead thrilled,
And stars might understand.
The Threefold, and the One;
And lo, He binds them to her orient breast,
His manhood girded on.
Beneath that bosom ran:
Deep in that womb the conquering Paraclete
Smote Godhead on to man.
The Threefold and the One;
Her God upon her lap, the Virgin Bride,
Her awful Child, her Son!