THY love is all about me like the loveliness

Of Earth when she puts by the veiling of the snow

And all her beauty of ploughed and fallow, ochre and red,

Nourishes me anew. Thy love is all about me,

More intimately near my spirit than the flesh

Wherein I live and move and have my daily being.

For only in the enabling presence of thy love

I can become myself, that else with alien speech

Hear myself strangely utter fancies foreign to me.

Within thy love my spirit is confident, at home

As I was never yet in mind or body of mine;

For thou embracest me with that which is not strange

To my imprisoned spirit, bewildered in the mesh

Of this incomprehensible, this unfamiliar world,

That by the magic of thy love is changed for me

Into a welcoming presence, friendly and wonderful.