These two poems are in the nature of metrical experiments. The first is a kind
of compromise between the stress system and the foot measure. The stanza is of four
lines, alternately of twelve and ten stresses. The second and fourth line in
each stanza can be read as a ten-foot line of mixed iambs and anapaests, the first and third, though a similar system
subject to replacement of a foot anywhere by a single-syllable half-foot could
be applied, are still mainly readable by stresses.
The other poem is an experiment in the use of quantitative foot measures. It is
a four-line stanza reading alternately
˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘
¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ ¯ |
¯ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯ ¯ | |
and ¯ ˘ ¯ | ˘ ¯
˘ | ˘ ˘ ¯ |
It could indeed be read otherwise, in several
ways, but read in the ordinary way it would lose all lyrical quality and the
soul of its rhythm.
The Bird of Fire is the living vehicle of the gold fire of the Divine Light and
the white fire of the Divine Tapas and the crimson
fire of Divine Love - and everything else of the Divine Consciousness.
SHIVA - THE INCONSCIENT CREATOR
The quantitative metre of Trance is suited only for a very brief lyrical
poem. For longer poems I have sought to use it as a base but to liberate it by
the introduction of an ample number of modulations which allow a fairly free
variation of the rhythm without destroying the consistency of the underlying
rhythmic measure. This is achieved in Shiva by allowing as the main modulations
(1) a paeon anywhere in place of an amphibrach, (2)
the substitution of a long for a short syllable either in the first
Page-578
or the last syllable of an amphibrach, at
will, (3) the substitution of a dactyl for an initial amphibrach, (4) the
substitution of a long instead of short syllable in the middle of the final anapaest, both this and the ultimate syllable to be in that
case stressed in reading, e.g.,
deathless | and lóne héad.
The suppression of the full value of long syllables to make them figure as
metrical shorts has to be avoided in quantitative metre.
Scan:
Ă fāce ŏn | thĕ cōld dīre | mōūntain pēāks
Grānd ănd still; | ĭts līnes whīte | ănd āūstēre
Mātch wĭth thĕ | ŭnmēāsured
| snōwў strēāks
Cūttĭng hēāven,
| ĭmplācā|blĕ ănd
shēēr.
The Inconscient as the source and
author of all material creation is one of the main discoveries of modern
psychology, but it agrees with the idea of a famous Vedic hymn. In the
Upanishads, Prajna, the Master of Sushupti,
is the Ishwara and therefore the original Creator out
of a superconscient sleep. The idea of the poem is
that this creative Inconscient also is Shiva creating
here life in matter out of an apparently inconscient
material trance as from above he creates all the worlds (not the material only)
from a superconscient trance. The reality is a
supreme Consciousness - but that is veiled by the appearance on one side of the
superconscient sleep, on the other of the material Inconscience. Here the emphasis is on the latter; the superconscient is only hinted at, not indicated, - it is
the Infinity out of which comes the revealing Flame.
THE LIFE HEAVENS
Further modulations have been introduced in this poem -
Page-579
a greater use is made of tetrasyllabic
feet such as paeons, epitrites,
di-iambs, ionics and, once
only, the antispast - and in a few places the foot of
three long syllables (molossus) has been used, and in
others a foot extending to five syllables (e.g., Dĕlīvĕred
frŏm grīēf).
Scan:
Ă līfe ŏf | ĭntēnsĭtĭes | wīde,
ĭmmūne
Flōāts bĕhīnd
| thĕ ēārth ănd | hĕr līfe-frēt,
Ă māgĭc ŏf
| rēālms māstĕred
by | spēll ănd rūne,
Grāndĭōse, blīss|fŭl,
cōloured, | ĭncrĕāte.
There were two places in which at the time of writing there did not seem to me
to be a satisfactory completeness and the addition of a stanza seemed to be
called for - one at the end of the description of the Life Heavens, a stanza
which would be a closing global description of the essence of the vital
Heavens, the other (less imperatively called for) in the utterance of the
Voice. There it is no doubt very condensed, but it cannot be otherwise. I
thought, however, that one stanza might be added hinting rather than stating the
connection between the two extremes. The connection is between the Divine
suppressed in its opposites and the Divine eternal in its own unveiled and undescended nature. The idea is that the other worlds are
not evolutionary but typal and each presents in a
limited perfection some aspect of the Infinite, but each complete, perfectly
satisfied in itself, not asking or aspiring for anything else, for
self-exceeding of any kind. That aspiration, on the contrary, is self-imposed
on the imperfection of Earth; the very fact of the Divine being there, but
suppressed in its phenomenal opposites, compels an effort to arrive at the
unveiled Divine - by ascent, but also by a descent of the Divine perfection for
evolutionary manifestation here. That is why the Earth declares itself a deeper
Power than Heaven because it holds in itself that possibility implied in the
presence of the suppressed Divine here, - which does not exist in the
perfection of the vital (or even the mental) Heavens.
Page-580
JIVANMUKTA
Written in Alcaics. These Alcaics
are not perhaps very orthodox. I have treated the close of the first two lines
not as a dactyl but as a cretic and have taken the
liberty in any stanza of turning this into a double trochee. In one closing
line I have started the dactylic run with two short preliminary syllables and
there is occasionally a dactyl or anapaest in
unlawful places; the dactyls too are not all pure dactyls. The object is to
bring in by modulations some variety and a more plastic form and easier run than
strict orthodoxy could give. But in essence, I think, the alcaic
movement remains in spite of these departures.
The subject is the Vedantic ideal of the living liberated man -jivanmukta- though perhaps I have given a pull
towards my own ideal which the strict Vedantin would
consider illegitimate.
IN HORIS AETERNUM
This poem on its technical side aims at finding a halfway house between free
verse and regular metrical poetry. It is an attempt to avoid the chaotic
amorphousness of free verse and keep to a regular form based on the fixed
number of stresses in each line and part of a line while yet there shall be a
great plasticity and variety in all the other elements of poetic rhythm, the
number of syllables, the management of the feet, if any, the distribution of
the stress-beats, the changing modulation of the rhythm. In Horis Aeternum was meant as a
first essay in this kind, a very simple and elementary model. The line here is
cast into three parts, the first containing two stresses, the second and third
each admitting three, four such lines rhymed constituting the stanza.
(From Letters of the
Author)
Page-581