Humbles and amplifies himself
To build and share a tenement of stars."

Once when we broke a loaf of bread
And shared the honey, Celia said:
"To share all beauty as the interchanging dust,
To be akin and kind and to entrust
All men to one another for their good,
Is to have heard and understood,
And carried to the common enemy
In you and me,
The ultimatum of democracy."

"But to what goal?" I wondered. And I heard her happy speech:
"It is my faith that God is our own dream
Of perfect understanding of the soul.
It is my passion that, alike through me
And every member of eternity,
The source of God is sending the same stream.
It is my peace that when my life is whole,
God's life shall be completed and supreme."

And once when I had made complaint
About America, she warned me: "Be not faint
Of heart, but bold to see the soul's advance.
The chances are not far nor few....
Face beauty," Celia said, "then beauty faces you."

And under all things her advice was true.
... Discovering what she knew,
Not only on a mountainous place
Or by the solving sea
But through the world I have seen endless beauty, as the number grows
Of those who, in a child cheated of simple joy
Or in a wasted rose
Or in a lover's immemorial lonely eyes
Or in machines that quicken and destroy
A multitude or in a mother's unregarded grace
And broken heart, through all the skies
And all humanity,
Seek out the single spirit, face to face,
Find it, become a conscious part of it
And know that something pure and exquisite,
Although inscrutably begun,
Surely exalts the many into one.

"I shall not lose, nor you,"
I said to Celia. Over the world the morning-dew
Moved like a hymn and sang to us: "Go now, fulfill
Your destiny and joy;
Each in the other, both in that Italian boy,
And he in you, like flowers in a hill!"
... She was the nearness of imperfect God
On whom in her perfection was at work.
Lest I should shirk
My share, I asked her for His blessing and His nod--
And His breath was in her shining hair like the wind in golden-rod.

"But, Celia, Celia, tell me what to be,"
I asked, "and what to do,
To keep your faith in me,
To witness mine in you!"
She answered: "Dare to see
In every man and woman everywhere
The making of us two.
See none that we can spare
From the creation of our soul.
Swear to be