Spem in Alium

I have placed my hope in no other god but thee,

Transfiguring spirit of poetry,

And as the levels of the landscape rise

In roofline, tree and hill before my eyes,

Until the clouds themselves are earthed in light,

Their changes show the world is not complete

And never will be, as we read its book,

Transfiguration glancing with each look,

Whenever light (changing itself) descries

Another variation for the eyes,

All climbing like a counterpoint of voices,

And sight aware of what, unsighted, stays

Hidden behind a foreground and a meaning

Which cannot be restricted to the thing

Shorn of the spaces that surround its being.

Tallis, you tell the poet what is here

As if that arch of song which throngs the ear,

Shaping not only the invisible,

Rang like the currency of daylight, full

Of the nearby and the answering distances,

Outward and far to where the horizon lies:

And in the altered light there, you can weigh

The pull of the planet travelling its sky,

And one more journey to another day

Complete, and waiting on a dawn unseen,

Unhurriedly to let the changes re-begin.

CHARLES TOMLINSON