Canto Two

The Adoration of the Divine Mother

A STILLNESS absolute, incommunicable,

Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul;

A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense

All that the labouring senses still would weave

Self's vast spiritual silence occupies Space;

Only the Nameless without space and time:

Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;

We have done with birth and death and work and fate.

Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,

But where hast thou thrown Self's mission and Self's power?

One was within thee who was self and world,

Escape brings not the victory and the crown!

But nothing is finished and the world goes on

Only the everlasting No has neared

But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,

The voice that chants to the creator Fire,

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The passion and the beauty of the Bride,

The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?

A black veil has been lifted; we have seen

But who has lifted up the veil of light

The mystery of God's birth and acts remains

Unsolved the riddle of the unfinished Play;

And still the last inviolate secret hides

Behind the gold eidolon of a Name.

But far beyond the ineffable suntracks blaze:

A last bare step into eternity.

Infinity takes back the forms it gave,

His million rays return into the Sun.

Nature left nude and still uncovers God.

When her strong garbs are torn away from us,

The zero covers an immortal face.

A huge extinction is not God's last word,

The meaning of this great mysterious world.

Awaking, it can wake the trance-bound soul

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It can make the world a vessel of Spirit's force,

To free the self is but one radiant pace;

Even while he stood on being's naked edge

Faced their extinction in some featureless Vast,

Across the silence of the ultimate Calm,

A body of wonder and translucency

Escaping into the original Bliss

Someone came infinite and absolute.

Even as a mother draws her child to her arms,

Abolishing the signless emptiness,

Piercing the limitless Unknowable,

A beautiful and felicitous lustre stole.

Imaged itself in a surprising beam

Touching through him all longing sentient things.

Cancelled the vanity of the cosmic whirl.

Was felt in the unconscious universe;

A love that bore the cross of pain with joy

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The secret caught of God's felicity.

It held the spirit to its miraculous course;

It justified the labour of the suns.

A Mother Might brooded upon the world;

Transcending all that is, denying none:

He felt a rapturous and unstumbling Force.

Of all that here is made and then destroyed,

Who, mediatrix, binds earth to the Supreme.

The covering Nescience was unmasked and slain;

And the dull moods of its perverting will.

Knowledge and Ignorance could strive no more;

Antagonist poles of the world's artifice,

Throwing their figures between us and her.

Of which the darkened universe is the robe.

Extinction was no more the sole release.

Revealed was the meaning of our spirit's birth,

In the inconscience of material things

A Heart was felt in the spaces wide and bare,

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Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths;

A Life from beyond grew conqueror here of death;

Wrong could not come where all was light and love.

Immensity was exceeded by a look,

Incarnating inexpressibly in her limbs

Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss.

In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;

Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;

She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.

A power of silence in the depths of God;

The magnet of our difficult ascent,

The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,

The Might of all that never yet came down.

To heal with her feet the aching throb of life

And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.

All contraries prepare her harmony;

In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,

Our self shall be one self with all through her.

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Our life shall find in its fulfilled response

Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.

The rapture of things eternal filled his limbs;

His spirit was caught in her intolerant flame.

Only a hunger of infinite bliss was left.

His base was gathered to one pointing spire.

This was a seed cast into endless Time.

A Word is spoken or a Light is shown,

So flashing out of the Timeless leaped the worlds;

All he had done was to prepare a field;

For all that he had been must now new-shape

Her beauty and greatness in his house of life.

His heart's demand had grown immeasurable:

Her light, her bliss he asked for earth and men.

To break earth's seal of ignorance and death;

Heaven is too high for outstretched hands to seize.

In the mind's silence the Transcendent acts

A vast surrender was his only strength.

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And fill the finite with the Infinite.

And crushed the many longings for whose sake

Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:

Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;

Her healing touch of love and truth and joy

His soul was freed and given to her alone.

END OF CANTO TWO

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