Up there, the braids were dark and round.

The skirt was slanting from the ground.

So suavely rocked she, swift but still,

Bride like a bell tower, like God’s will.

How strangely grew, to me at four,

Her feet like flowers from the floor.

She was a steep but decorous hill,

Garlanded wilderness, God’s will.

But this above all heights is strange:

No more the sky than she can change.

The sun may flower, clouds may chime.

She looms in laughter all this time;

As I within my own self loom:

An angel in a rented room,

Love’s likeness in a heart this poor,

And Christ asleep in my desk drawer.

Marvelous, beyond speaking of it,

God’s will is, and the will to love it.