Epiphany

Majestic, mild, immortally august,

In silence throned, to just and to unjust

One Lord of deep unutterable love,

I saw Him, Shiva, like a brooding dove

Close-winged upon her nest. The outcaste came,

The sinners gathered round that tender Flame,

The demons, by the other sterner gods

Rejected from their luminous abodes,

Gathered around the Refuge of the lost,

Soft-smiling on that wild and grisly host.

All who were refugeless, wretched, unloved,

The wicked and the good together moved

Naturally to Him, the asylum sweet,

And found their heaven at their Master’s feet.

The vision changed and in His place there stood

A Terror red as lightning or as blood;

His fierce right hand a javelin advanced

And, as He shook it, earthquake reeling danced

Across the hemisphere, ruin and plague

Rained out of heaven, disasters swift and vague

Threatened, a marching multitude of ills.

His foot strode forward to oppress the hills,

And at the vision of His burning eyes

The hearts of men grew faint with dread surmise

Of sin and punishment; their cry was loud,

“O Master of the stormwind and the cloud,

Spare, Rudra, spare. Show us that other form

Auspicious, not incarnate wrath and storm.”

The God of Wrath, the God of Love are one,

Nor least He loves when most He smites. Alone

Who rises above fear and plays with grief;

Defeat, and death, inherits full relief

From blindness and beholds the single Form,

Love masking Terror, Peace supporting storm.

The Friend of Man helps him with Life and Death,

Until he knows. Then freed from mortal breath

He feels the joy of the immortal play;

Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.

He too grows Rudra fierce, august and dire,

And Shiva, sweet fulfiller of desire.