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This
strutting “I” of human self and pride
Is a puppet built by Nature for her use,
And
dances as her strong compulsions bid,
Forcefully feeble, brilliantly obtuse.
Our
thinking is her leap of fluttering mind,
We hear and see by her constructed sense;
Our
force is hers; her colours have combined
Our fly-upon-the-wheel magnificence.
He
sits within who turns on her machine
These beings, portions of his mystery,
Many
dwarf beams of his great calm sunshine,
A reflex of his sole infinity.
One
mighty Self of cosmic act and thought
Employs
this figure of a unit nought.
Omnipresence
He
is in me, round me, facing everywhere.
Self-walled in ego to exclude His right,
I
stand upon its boundaries and stare
Into the frontiers of the Infinite.
Each
finite thing I see is a façade;
From its windows looks at me the Illimitable.
In
vain was my prison of separate body made;
His occult presence burns in every cell.
He
has become my substance and my breath;
He is my anguish and my ecstasy.
My
birth is His eternity’s sign, my death
A passage of His
immortality.
My
dumb abysses are His screened abode;
In
my heart’s chamber lives the unworshipped God.
Page-152
The
Inconscient Foundation
My
mind beholds1
its veiled subconscient base,
All the dead obstinate symbols of the past,
The
hereditary moulds, the stamps of race
Are upheld to sight, the old imprints effaced.
In
a downpour of supernal light it reads
The black Inconscient’s enigmatic script-
Recorded
in a hundred shadowy screeds
An inert world's obscure enormous drift;
All
flames, is torn and burned and cast away.
There slept the tab1es of the Ignorance,
There
the dumb dragon edicts of her sway,
The scriptures of Necessity and Chance.
Pure
is the huge foundation left2 and nude,
A
boundless mirror of God’s infinitude.
Adwaita
I
walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon
Where Shankaracharya’s tiny temple stands
Facing
Infinity from Time’s edge, alone
On the bare ridge ending earth’s vain romance.
Around
me was a formless solitude:
All had become one strange Unnamable,
An
unborn sole Reality world-nude,
Topless and fathomless, for ever still.
A
Silence that was Being’s only word,
The unknown beginning and the voiceless end
Abolishing
all things moment-seen or heard,
On an incommunicable summit reigned,
A
lonely Calm and void unchanging Peace
On
the dumb crest of Nature’s mysteries.
1
My soul regards 2
now
Page-153
The
Hill-Top Temple
After
unnumbered steps of a hill-stair
I saw upon earth's head brilliant with sun
The immobile Goddess in her house of stone
In
a loneliness of meditating air.
Wise
were the human hands that set her there
Above the world and Time's dominion;
The Soul of all that lives, calm, pure, alone,
Revealed
its boundless self mystic and bare.
Our
body is an epitome of some Vast
That masks its presence by our humanness.
In us the secret Spirit can indite
A page and summary of the Infinite,
A nodus of Eternity expressed
Live
in an image and a sculptured face.
Because
Thou art
Because
Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;
It
bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.
Behind
all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune:
Thy
sweetness haunts my heart through Nature’s ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.
It
loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The
moments bring Thee on their fiery wings;
Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone.
Time
voyages with Thee upon its prow –
And
all the future's passionate hope is Thou.
Page-154
Divine
Sight
Each
sight is now immortal with Thy bliss:
My soul through the rapt eyes has come to see;
A
veil is rent and they no more can miss
The miracle of Thy world-epiphany.
Into
an ecstasy of vision caught
Each natural object is of Thee apart,
A
rapture-symbol from Thy substance wrought,
A poem shaped in Beauty’s living heart,
A
master-work of colour and design,
A mighty sweetness borne on grandeur’s wings;
A
burdened wonder of significant line
Reveals itself in even commonest things.
All
forms are Thy dream-dialect of delight,
O
Absolute, O vivid Infinite.
Divine
Sense
Surely
I take no more an earthly food
But eat the fruits and plants of Paradise!
For
Thou hast changed my sense’s habitude
From mortal pleasure to divine surprise.
Hearing
and sight are now an ecstasy,
And all the fragrances of earth disclose
A
sweetness matching in intensity
Odour of the crimson marvel of the rose.
In
every contact’s deep invading thrill,
That lasts as if its source were infinite,
I
feel Thy touch; Thy bliss imperishable
Is crowded into that moment of delight.
The
body burns with Thy rapture’s sacred fire,
Pure,
passionate, holy, virgin of desire.
Page-155
Immortality
I
have drunk deep of God’s own liberty
From which an occult sovereignty derives:
Hidden in an earthly garment that survives,
I
am the worldless being vast and free.
A
moment stamped with that supremacy
Has rescued me from cosmic hooks and gyves;
Abolishing death and time my nature lives
In
the deep heart of immortality.
God’s
contract signed with Ignorance is torn;
Time has become the Eternal’s endless year,
My soul’s wide self of living infinite Space,1
Outlines
its body luminous and unborn
Behind the earth-robe; under the mask2
grows clear
The mould of an imperishable face.
I
am greater than the greatness of the seas,
A swift tornado of God-energy:
A
helpless flower that quivers in the breeze
I am weaker than the reed one breaks with ease.
I
harbour all the wisdom of the wise
In my nature of stupendous Ignorance;
On
a flame of righteousness I fix my eyes
While I wallow in sweet sin and join hell’s dance.
My
mind is brilliant like a full-orbed moon,
Its darkness is the caverned troglodyte’s.
I
gather long Time’s wealth and squander soon;
I am an epitome of opposites.
I
with repeated life death’s sleep surprise;
I
am a transience of the eternities.
1 My
soul, the living self of infinite Space,
2
under the earth
Page-156
Evolution
I
passed into a lucent still abode
And saw as in a mirror crystalline
An ancient Force ascending serpentine
The
unhasting spirals of the aeonic road.
Earth
was a cradle for the arriving god
And man but a half-dark half-luminous sign
Of the transition of the veiled Divine
From
Matter’s sleep and the tormented load
Of
ignorant life and death to the Spirit’s light.
Mind liberated swam Light's ocean vast,
And life escaped from its grey tortured line;
I
saw Matter illumining its parent Night.
The soul could feel into infinity cast
Timeless God-bliss the heart incarnadine.
The
Silver Call
There
is a godhead of unrealised things
To which Time’s splendid gains are hoarded dross;
A
cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings
Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.
All
eye has seen and all the ear has heard
Is a pale illusion by some greater voice
And
mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,
No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice
Can
equal these diviner ecstasies.
A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken
Of
those yet unimagined harmonies,
The fate and privilege of unborn men.
As
rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth
waits that distant marvel to disclose.
Page-157
The
Inner Fields
There
is a brighter ether than this blue
Pretence of an enveloping heavenly vault,
A deeper greenness than this laughing assault1
Of
emerald rapture pearled with tears of dew.
Immortal
spaces of cerulean hue
Are in our reach and fields without this fault
Of drab brown earth and streams that never halt
In
their deep murmur which white flowers strew
Floating
like stars upon a strip of sky.
This world behind is made of truer stuff
Than the manufactured tissue of earth’s grace.
There
we can walk and see the gods go by
And sip from Hebe’s cup nectar enough
To make for us heavenly limbs and deathless face.
1
Royaler
investiture than this massed assault
Page-158
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