Limits and Renewals

The Playmate

Rudyard Kipling


SHE is not Folly—that I know.
Her steadfast eyelids tell me so
When, at the hour the lights divide,
She steals as summonsed to my side.

When, finger on the pursèd lip;
In secret, mirthful fellowship
She, heralding new framed delights,
Breathes, ‘This shall be a Night of Nights!’

Then out of Time and out of Space,
Is built an Hour and a Place
Where all an earnest, baffled Earth
Blunders and trips to make us mirth;

Where, from the trivial flux of Things,
Rise unconceived miscarryings
Outrageous but immortal, shown,
Of Her great love, to me alone. . . .

She is not Wisdom but, may be,
Wiser than all the Norms is She
And more than Wisdom I prefer
To wait on Her,—to wait on Her!


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