Love's Invitation

If Love should count you worthy and should deign
One day to seek your door and be your guest,
Pause! ere you draw your bolt and bid him rest
If in your old content you would remain.
For not alone he enters; in his train
Are angels of the mists, the lonely quest,
Dreams of the unfulfilled and unpossessed,
And sorrow and life's immemorial pain.
He wakes desires you never may forget,
He shows you stars you never saw before,
He makes you share with him for evermore
The burden of the world's divine regret.
How wise you were to open not, and yet,
How poor if you should turn him from your door.

L.S. Lysaght

Quoted in 'Forty Days and Forty Nights' by Brother Ramon