Canto Twelve

The Heavens of the Ideal

ALWAYS the Ideal beckoned from afar.

Awakened by the touch of the Unseen,

Aspired the strong discoverer, tireless Thought,

It left known summits for the unknown peaks:

It longed for the Light that knows not death and birth.

Into a constant heaven felt always here.

A new degree of wonder and of bliss,

A great wide step trembling with jewelled fire

Upholding with his flame the immortal hope,

That he might feel the tread of pilgrim feet

At either end of each effulgent stair

In a blue lucency of dreaming Space

On one side glimmered hue on floating hue,

In a tremulous rapture of the heart's insight

The lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose.

Are superconscious realms of heavenly peace,

Page – 277

Across the covert air the spirit breathes,

Unseen, unguessed by the blind suffering world,

It blooms for ever at the feet of God,

Here too its bud is born in human breasts;

The world is turned into a temple ground

In an outburst of heavenly joy and ease

And gives the rapture-offering of its all,

A bliss is felt that never can wholly cease,

Flowers goldening our earth of red desire.

From the soiled passionate ritual of our hopes,

A fiery stillness wakes the slumbering cells,

And marvellously is fulfilled at last

A flame in a white voiceless cupola

The radiant limbs that know not birth and death,

The wings that crowd thought's ardent silences,

Our hidden centres of celestial force

Mind pauses thrilled with the supernal Ray,

Ideal love and flawless happiness

Page – 278

And laughter of the heart's sweetness and delight

And beauty and the rhythmic feet of the hours.

What here is in the bud has blossomed there.

The blaze of godlike thought and golden bliss,

There are the wonderful voices, the sun-laugh,

And the mysteried vineyards of the gold moon-wine,

A brilliant shadow visits mortal life.

Pressed on the bosom the Immortal's touch is felt,

Here upon earth are early awakenings,

And grown upon the yearning of her soil

There are the imperishable beatitudes.

World after coloured and ecstatic world

On the other side of the eternal stairs

Aspired to reach the Being's absolutes.

Out of the depths where life and thought are tombed,

In a veiled Nature's hallowed secrecies

Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,

Once kindled, never can its flamings cease.

Page – 279

Till borne by runners of the Day and Dusk

And clambers whitening to the invisible Throne.

A dream of giant contours, titan lines,

Heavens of unchanging Good pure and unborn,

As in a symbol sky they start to view

On their summits they bear up the sleepless Flame;

Transcendent of the paths of Fate and Time,

Through a pale-sapphire ether of god-mind

A thunder rolling mid the hills of God,

Exceeding us, to exceed ourselves they call

Far from our eager reach those summits live,

Hardly in a dire ecstasy of toil

Austere, intolerant they claim from us

Our hearts cannot cleave to nor our flesh support;

To attempt the immense adventure of that climb

Our human knowledge is a candle burnt

Man's virtue, a coarse-spun ill-fitting dress,

Passionate and blinded, bleeding, stained with mire

Page – 280

An imperfection dogs our highest strength;

Happy the worlds that have not felt our fall,

Impoverished not by earth-mind's indigence,

His bare spontaneous swift intensities;

And there his sovereign autarchy of bliss

Heirs and cosharers of divinity.

He through the Ideal's kingdoms moved at will,

Accepted their beauty and their greatness bore,

But passed nor stayed beneath their splendour's rule.

In each a seraph-winged high-browed Idea

Persuaded all action to one golden sense,

And made a world where it could reign alone,

Insignia of their victory and their faith,

A quenchless flame or an unfading flower,

A glorious shining Angel of the Way

The sweetness and the might of an idea,

The heart of the meaning of the universe,

Yet were there regions where these absolutes met

Light stood embraced by light, fire wedded fire,

Page – 281

To find his soul in the world's single Soul,

Onward he passed to a diviner sphere:

All high and beautiful and desirable powers

Become a single multitudinous whole.

Above the Silence and its thousandfold Word,

For ever united and inseparable,

On the wide spirit height where all are one.

END OF CANTO TWELVE

Page – 282