Appendix Poems in Greek and in French Greek Epigram Lorsque rien n'existait Sur les grands sommets blancs Note on the Texts Index of Titles Index of First Lines

Rishi

Yes, He creates the worlds and heaven above

With a single word;

And these things being Himself are real, yet

Are they like dreams,

For He awakes to self He could forget

In what He seems.

Yet, King, deem nothing vain: through many veils

This Spirit gleams.

The dreams of God are truths and He prevails.

Then all His time

Cherish thyself, O King, and cherish men,

Anchored in Him.

MANU

Upon the silence of the sapphire main

Waves that sublime

Rise at His word and when that fiat's stilled

Are hushed again,

So is it, Rishi, with the Spirit concealed,

Things and men?

RISHI

Hear then the truth. Behind this visible world

The eyes see plain,

Another stands, and in its folds are curled

Our waking dreams.

Dream is more real, which, while here we wake,

Unreal seems.

From that our mortal life and thoughts we take.

Its fugitive gleams

Are here made firm and solid; there they float

In a magic haze,

Melody swelling note on absolute note,

A lyric maze,

Beauty on beauty heaped pell-mell to chain

The enchanted gaze,

Page – 232

Thought upon mighty thought with grandiose strain

Weaving the stars.

This is that world of dream from which our race

Came; by these bars

Of body now enchained, with laggard pace,

Borne down with cares,

A little of that rapture to express

We labour hard,

A little of that beauty, music, thought

With toil prepared;

And if a single strain is clearly caught,

Then our reward

Is great on earth, and in the world that floats

Lingering awhile

We hear the fullness and the jarring notes

Reconcile, —

Then travel forwards. So we slowly rise,

And every mile

Of our long journey mark with eager eyes;

So we progress

With gurge of revolution and recoil,

Slaughter and stress

Of anguish because without fruit we toil,

Without success;

Even as a ship upon the stormy flood

With fluttering sails

Labours towards the shore; the angry mood

Of Ocean swells,

Calms come and favouring winds, but yet afar

The harbour pales

In evening mists and Ocean threatens war:

Such is our life.

Of this be sure, the mighty game goes on,

The glorious strife,

Until the goal predestined has been won.

Not on the cliff

To be shattered has our ship set forth of old,

Page – 233

Nor in the surge

To founder. Therefore, King, be royal, bold,

And through the urge

Of winds, the reboant thunders and the close

Tempestuous gurge

Press on for ever laughing at the blows

Of wind and wave.

The haven must be reached; we rise from pyre,

We rise from grave,

We mould our future by our past desire,

We break, we save,

We find the music that we could not find,

The thought think out

We could not then perfect, and from the mind

That brilliant rout

Of wonders marshal into living forms.

End then thy doubt;

Grieve not for wounds, nor fear the violent storms,

For grief and pain

Are errors of the clouded soul; behind

They do not stain

The living spirit who to these is blind.

Torture, disdain,

Defeat and sorrow give him strength and joy:

'Twas for delight

He sought existence, and if pains alloy,

'Tis here in night

Which we call day. The Yogin knows, O King,

Who in his might

Travels beyond the mind's imagining,

The worlds of dream.

For even they are shadows, even they

Are not, — they seem.

Behind them is a mighty blissful day

From which they stream.

The heavens of a million creeds are these:

Peopled they teem

Page – 234

By creatures full of joy and radiant ease.

There is the mint

From which we are the final issue, types

Which here we print

In dual letters. There no torture grips,

Joy cannot stint

Her streams, — beneath a more than mortal sun

Through golden air

The spirits of the deathless regions run.

But we must dare

To still the mind into a perfect sleep

And leave this lair

Of gross material flesh which we would keep

Always, before

The guardians of felicity will ope

The golden door.

That is our home and that the secret hope

Our hearts explore.

To bring those heavens down upon the earth

We all descend,

And fragments of it in the human birth

We can command.

Perfect millenniums are sometimes, until

In the sweet end

All secret heaven upon earth we spill,

Then rise above

Taking mankind with us to the abode

Of rapturous Love,

The bright epiphany whom we name God,

Towards whom we drove

In spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain.

He stands behind

The worlds of Sleep; He is and shall remain

When they grow blind

To individual joys; for even these

Are shadows, King,

And gloriously into that lustre cease

Page – 235

From which they spring.

We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,

Waves of that sea:

From Him we come, to Him we go, desire

Eternally,

And so long as He wills, our separate birth

Is and shall be.

Shrink not from life, O Aryan, but with mirth

And joy receive

His good and evil, sin and virtue, till

He bids thee leave.

But while thou livest, perfectly fulfil

Thy part, conceive

Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,

The drama His.

Work, but the fruits to God alone belong,

Who only is.

Work, love and know, — so shall thy spirit win

Immortal bliss.

Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,

Fear not to enjoy;

For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing

Fools to annoy.

From self escape and find in love alone

A higher joy.

MANU

O Rishi, I have wide dominion,

The earth obeys

And heaven opens far beyond the sun

Her golden gaze.

But Him I seek, the still and perfect One, —

The Sun, not rays.

Page – 236

RISHI

Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set

In the huge press

Of many worlds to build a mighty state

For man's success,

Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,

Perfect the race.

For thou art He, O King. Only the night

Is on thy soul

By thy own will. Remove it and recover

The serene whole

Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover

To God the goal.

In the Moonlight

If now must pause the bullocks' jingling tune,

Here let it be beneath the dreaming trees

Supine and huge that hang upon the breeze,

Here in the wide eye of the silent moon.

How living a stillness reigns! The night's hushed rules

All things obey but three, the slow wind's sigh

Among the leaves, the cricket's ceaseless cry,

The frog's harsh discord in the ringing pools.

Yet they but seem the silence to increase

And dreadful wideness of the inhuman night.

The whole hushed world immeasurable might

Be watching round this single spot of peace.

So boundless is the darkness and so rife

With thoughts of infinite reach that it creates

A dangerous sense of space and abrogates

The wholesome littleness of human life.

Page – 237

The common round that each of us must tread

Now seems a thing unreal; we forget

The heavy yoke the world on us has set,

The slave's vain labour earning tasteless bread.

Space hedges us and Time our hearts o'ertakes;

Our bounded senses and our boundless thought

Strive through the centuries and are slowly brought

Back to the source whence their divergence wakes.

The source that none have traced, since none can know

Whether from Heaven the eternal waters well

Through Nature's matted locks, as Ganges fell,

Or from some dismal nether darkness flow.

Two genii in the dubious heart of man,

Two great unhappy foes together bound

Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground;

They strive for ever since the race began.

One from his body like a bridge of fire

Mounts upward azure-winged with eager eyes;

One in his brain deep-mansioned labouring lies

And clamps to earth the spirit's high desire.

Here in this moonlight with strange visions rife

I seem to see their vast peripheries

Without me in the sombre mighty trees,

And, hark! their silence turns the wheels of life.

These are the middle and the first. Are they

The last too? Has the duel then no close?

Shall neither vanquish of the eternal foes,

Nor even at length this moonlight turn to day?

Our age has made an idol of the brain,

The last adored a purer presence; yet

Page – 238

In Asia like a dove immaculate

He lurks deep-brooding in the hearts of men.

But Europe comes to us bright-eyed and shrill.

"A far delusion was that mounting fire,

An impulse baulked and an unjust desire;

It fades as we ascend the human hill."

She cries to us to labour in the light

Of common things, grow beautiful and wise

On strong material food, nor vex our eyes

With straining after visionary delight.

Ah, beautiful and wise, but to what end?

Europe knows not, nor any of her schools

Who scorn the higher thought for dreams of fools;

Riches and joy and power meanwhile are gained.

Gained and then lost! For Death the heavy grip

Shall loosen, Death shall cloud the laughing eye,

And he who broke the nations soon shall lie

More helpless than a little child asleep.

And after? Nay, for death is end and term.

A fiery dragon through the centuries curled,

He feeds upon the glories of the world

And the vast mammoth dies before the worm.

Stars run their cycle and are quenched; the suns

Born from the night are to the night returned,

When the cold tenebrous spaces have inurned

The listless phantoms of the Shining Ones.

From two dead worlds a burning world arose

Of which the late putrescent fruit is man;

From chill dark space his roll of life began

And shall again in icy quiet close.

Page – 239

Our lives are but a transitory breath:

Mean pismires in the sad and dying age

Of a once glorious planet, on the edge

Of bitter pain we wait eternal death.

Watering the ages with our sweat and blood

We pant towards some vague ideal state

And by the effort fiercer ills create,

Working by lasting evil transient good.

Insults and servitude we bear perforce;

With profitable crimes our souls we rack,

Vexing ourselves lest earth our seed should lack

Who needs us not in her perpetual course;

Then down into the earth descend and sleep

For ever, and the lives for which we toiled

Forget us, who when they their turn have moiled,

Themselves forgotten into silence creep.

Why is it all, the labour and the din,

And wherefore do we plague our souls and vex

Our bodies or with doubts our days perplex?

Death levels soon the virtue with the sin.

If Death be end and close the useless strife,

Strive not at all, but take what ease you may

And make a golden glory of the day,

Exhaust the little honey of your life.

Fear not to take her beauty to your heart

Whom you so utterly desire; you do

No hurt to any, for the inner you

So cherished is a dream that shall depart.

The wine of life is sweet; let no man stint

His longing or refuse one passionate hope.

Page – 240

Why should we cabin in such infinite scope,

Restrict the issue of such golden mint?

Society forbids? It for our sakes

Was fashioned; if it seek to fence around

Our joys and pleasures in such narrow bound,

It gives us little for the much it takes.

Nor need we hearken to the gospel vain

That bids men curb themselves to help mankind.

We lose our little chance of bliss, then blind

And silent lie for ever. Whose the gain?

What helps it us if so mankind be served?

Ourselves are blotted out from joy and light,

Having no profit of the sunshine bright,

While others reap the fruit our toils deserved.

O this new god who has replaced the old!

He dies today, he dies tomorrow, dies

At last for ever, and the last sunrise

Shall have forgotten him extinct and cold.

But virtue to itself is joy enough?

Yet if to us sin taste diviner? why

Should we not herd in Epicurus' sty

Whom Nature made not of a Stoic stuff?

For Nature being all, desire must reign.

It is too sweet and strong for us to slay

Upon a nameless altar, saying nay

To honied urgings for no purpose plain.

A strange unreal gospel Science brings, —

Being animals to act as angels might;

Mortals we must put forth immortal might

And flutter in the void celestial wings.

Page – 241

"Ephemeral creatures, for the future live,"

She bids us, "gather in for unborn men

Knowledge and joy, and forfeit, nor complain,

The present which alone is yours to give."

Man's immortality she first denies

And then assumes what she rejects, made blind

By sudden knowledge, the majestic Mind

Within her smiling at her sophistries.

Not so shall Truth extend her flight sublime,

Pass from the poor beginnings she has made

And with the splendour of her wings displayed

Range through the boundaries of Space and Time.

Clamp her not down to her material finds!

She shall go further. She shall not reject

The light within, nor shall the dialect

Of unprogressive pedants bar men's minds.

We seek the Truth and will not pause nor fear.

Truth we will have and not the sophist's pleas;

Animals, we will take our grosser ease,

Or, spirits, heaven's celestial music hear.

The intellect is not all; a guide within

Awaits our question. He it was informed

The reason, He surpasses; and unformed

Presages of His mightiness begin.

Nor mind submerged, nor self subliminal,

But the great Force that makes the planets wheel

Through ether and the sun in flames reveal

His godhead, is in us perpetual.

That Force in us is body, that is mind,

And what is higher than the mind is He.

Page – 242

This was the secret Science could not see;

Aware of death, to life her eyes were blind.

Through chemistry she seeks the source of life,

Nor knows the mighty laws that she has found,

Are Nature's bye-laws merely, meant to ground

A grandiose freedom building peace by strife.

The organ for the thing itself she takes,

The brain for mind, the body for the soul,

Nor has she patience to explore the whole,

But like a child a hasty period makes.

"It is enough," she says, "I have explored

The whole of being; nothing now remains

But to put details in and count my gains."

So she deceives herself, denies her Lord.

Therefore He manifests Himself; once more

The wonders of the secret world within

Wrapped yet with an uncertain mist begin

To look from that thick curtain out; the door

Opens. Her days are numbered, and not long

Shall she be suffered to belittle thus

Man and restrain from his tempestuous

Uprising that immortal spirit strong.

He rises now; for God has taken birth.

The revolutions that pervade the world

Are faint beginnings and the discus hurled

Of Vishnu speeds down to enring the earth.

The old shall perish; it shall pass away,

Expunged, annihilated, blotted out;

And all the iron bands that ring about

Man's wide expansion shall at last give way.

Page – 243

Freedom, God, Immortality; the three

Are one and shall be realised at length,

Love, Wisdom, Justice, Joy and utter Strength

Gather into a pure felicity.

It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,

What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed,

Vision and vain imagination deemed,

The City of Delight, the Age of Gold.

The Iron Age is ended. Only now

The last fierce spasm of the dying past

Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed,

Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow.

This is man's progress; for the Iron Age

Prepares the Age of Gold. What we call sin,

Is but man's leavings as from deep within

The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage.

He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain,

Because it clings and constantly returns,

And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns

More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain.

He rises to the good with Titan wings:

And this the reason of his high unease,

Because he came from the infinities

To build immortally with mortal things;

The body with increasing soul to fill,

Extend Heaven's claim upon the toiling earth

And climb from death to a diviner birth

Grasped and supported by immortal Will.

Page – 244