IF thou art a collecting-place,
a place in space where all things
are wont to meet
for knowledge and to fructify,
living a heart's offensive life,
if thou hast taken to thee all ideas,
those, young, which step together like a thousand men
clashing cymbals,
and those which are serene and spread themselves
like streams in time,

that also which a man who lived alone abandoned,
so great that it obstructs our highest doors,
so tragic, great, and heavy on our shoulders
that none of us has had the strength to move it yet,

if thou hast known all shocks and impulses,
all looks, all coveting of hands,
contagion of fire, and blood, and words,
and if sometimes thou sawest, lighting all men's eyes,
the crown emblazoned high on standards
in clash of weapons, in a rocket of cries,

if thou art centre unto vortices
whereinto rush pell-mell,
rejoicing endlessly because they blend with thine,
the world's pulsations,
if thou sufficest to be all at once,
all that is, and stirs, and strives to be,
if he who is thyself and truest of all
adds to all this
desire still to be more,
desire born of thyself, of him who commands
all strangers come from vasts of space
for the communion of thy mind and blood,
and to shake themselves unto thy semblance,

if thou sufficest to be thus sometimes,
this present a vast future rumbles in,
O thou who art come already from all the dead,
and if, from being so much,
thou movest thyself to the point of being suddenly,
born from thy depths,
the invasion, from stage to stage,
of a strange birth in columns of flames,
to the point of being but this marvellous pang
which digs a vacuum below thy heart,
this laugh, born of thy throat's ecstatic aching,
and if thou wert compelled,
in order from the stifling to be free,
to utter a great cry,
then, at that instant, enjoying in one flash
the swift perception of thy godhead,
thyself shalt be the god.