If only

If thou art filled, thou art not wrathful still—
And wanting wrath, thou losest sovereign sight
To judge the follies bred by stagnant schools,
Whose lessons cripple swiftness of the mind.
For comfort is the velvet sheath of men
Who trade their fire for silence and for sleep.

If thou art drunk, thy spirit is unclean—
Thou borrow’st life from death on usurer’s terms.
Dost hear upon the mountain’s barren crown
That piercing whistle cleaving through the dark?
It is the herald of thy frailty,
Which gently leads thee captive to thy bed.
Thus flesh betrays what weakness dares conceal.

If thou art miserly, then poor in soul,
Though coffers swell and golden chalices shine.
For love admits no tyrant to her court,
Nor crowns the hand that trembles lest it give.
Yet any beggar, naked to the storm,
May rise a king within her boundless realm,
If he but learns the sacred art of loss.

If thou art coward, thou dost dig thy grave
Before the bells have summoned thee to dust.
Thy days sink downward like forgotten stones
Into the well where slaves drink bitter night,
Bent ‘neath the burden of obedient shame,
Their crooked backs inscribed by fear alone.
The fearful man outlives himself each hour.

If thou art broken, cast not forth thy roar—
Let thy wounded spirit crouch awhile in shadow,
As doth the lion bleeding in the reeds,
Whose silence is more dreadful than his cry.
For grief, when tempered in the forge of time,
Becomes the steel by which the soul ascends;
And from the heart, once shattered into ash,
Shall rise a voice no sorrow may command.

But if thou art made holy by thy trials,
Then light itself shall kneel within thy halls.
Thou shalt become the architect of worlds,
A weaver of innumerable stars,
Where through the vast cathedrals of the heavens
The joyful bells of the divine resound—
Not calling mortals unto death and dust,
But unto boundless being without end.