Canto Two

The Growth of the Flame

A LAND of mountains and wide sun-beat plains

And giant rivers pacing to vast seas,

Silence swallowing life's acts into the deeps,

A brooding world of reverie and trance,

Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine

Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.

And the deep godheads of a grandiose past

As if this magnet drew their powers unseen.

Mounting from mind's last peaks to mate with gods,

To dive into the cosmic vastnesses,

Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable,

Rent man's horizons into infinity.

And art and beauty sprang from the human depths;

Ethics the human keyed to imitate heaven;

Refined the sense and magnified its reach

And taught the soul to soar beyond things known,

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Leaving earth's safety daring wings of Mind

Crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond

There Wisdom sits on her eternal throne.

Admitting to secret Powers that were her kin;

A mystic acolyte trained in Nature's school,

She laid the secrecies of her heart's deep muse

Her hours were a ritual in a timeless fane;

Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres

For the release of the imprisoned spirit

Or it helped to beat out new expressive forms

Some immemorial Soul in men and things,

Carrying a light from the Ineffable

Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven

Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman heights.

But hide the sight of that which lives within

Upon an inner vision's motionless verge,

Unveiled all Nature's meaning in a form,

The architecture of the Infinite

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Captured into wide breadths of soaring stone:

Held the merged heart absorbed in rapturous depths,

The world-interpreting movements of the dance

And posture; crafts minute in subtle lines

Or showed in a carving's sweep, a cup's design

Poems in largeness cast like moving worlds

Translated by grandeurs locked in Nature's heart

The beauty and sublimity of her forms,

Lifting the human word nearer to the god's.

His scrutiny discovered number's law

Mapped out the visible fashioning of the world,

A theorised diagram of mind and life.

But these alone could fill not her wide Self:

To her they seemed the great and early steps

Which saw not yet by its own native light;

Or stretched to find truth mind's divining rod;

But not the widest seeing of the soul,

Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods.

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A happiness too high for heart and sense

She felt in her; waiting as yet for form,

And natures strong to bear without recoil

Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss,

Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer heaven,

Met a great light from the Unknowable

Aware of the universal Self in all

Her soul's reflections, complements, counterparts,

Divided from her by walls of body and mind

Overcoming invisible hedge and masked defence

She wished to make all one immense embrace

Raised into a splendid point of seeing light

And make them one with God and world and her.

Still fewer felt the screened divinity

Approaching with some kinship to her heights.

Or conscious of some splendour hidden above

Glimpsing a light in a celestial vast,

And fell back to life's dull ordinary tone.

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Growing towards some largeness they felt near,

They still were prisoned by their human grain:

Too small and eager for her large-paced will,

Their nature weary grew of things too great.

Who could have walked the nearest to her ray,

But could not match the measure of her soul.

She walked in their front towards a greater light,

One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.

Attempting with a godlike rush and leap

Or with a slow great many-sided toil

Yet forced to be the satellites of her sun

Desiring they clutched at her with outstretched hands

Or longing with their self of life and flesh

The rest they could not see in visible light;

Or bound by the senses and the longing heart,

They could not grasp the mighty spirit she was

Some felt her with their souls and thrilled with her,

To see her was a summons to adore,

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So men worship a god too great to know,

They feel a Presence and obey a might,

To a divine ardour quickening the heart-beats,

Opened to the breath is a new diviner air,

He sees high steps climbing to Self and Light.

It saw, it felt, it knew the deity.

Her heart's inexhaustible sweetness lured their hearts,

Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,

They gave themselves to her and asked no more.

Their minds could not understand nor wholly know,

They felt a godhead and obeyed a call,

Their lives, their natures moved compelled by hers

Put on an aspect of divinity

They felt a larger future meet their walk;

They were moved by her towards great unknown things,

They lived in her, they saw the world with her eyes.

Divided between wonder and revolt,

Possessed by her, her striving to possess,

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Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts

Murmured at a yoke they would have wept to lose,

Others pursued her with life's blind desires

Hastened to engross her sweetness meant for all.

Demanding her for their sole jealous clasp,

And to their smallness craved a like response.

And hoped to bind her close with longing's cords.

They blamed her for a tyranny they loved,

Yet hankered for the splendour they refused.

The weakness of their earth could hardly bear,

Inapt to meet divinity so close,

Some drawn unwillingly by her divine sway

Unable to mount to levels too sublime,

Or forced to centre round her their passionate lives,

Her glory and grace that had enslaved their souls.

But mid this world, these hearts that answered her call,

None could stand up her equal and her mate.

Too pure that air was for small souls to breathe.

Her heart desired and fill with her own power

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A breath of Godhead greaten human time.

Covering their lives with her strong passionate hands

And dived in the shallow wave-depths of their lives

And bent to heal their sorrow and their pride,

To lift to it their aspiration's cry,

And surrounded with the silence of her deeps

Only her earthly surface bore their charge

Her greater self lived sole, unclaimed, within.

A nearness she could feel serenely one;

And to her spirit's large and free delight

Of animal and bird and flower and tree.

In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;

Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall.

Nowhere she found her partner of high tasks,

Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one.

Too great was her demand, too pure her force.

Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof,

Puissant, apart her soul as the gods live.

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As yet unlinked with the broad human scene,

In a small circle of young eager hearts,

Apprentice in the business of earth-life,

Content in her little garden of the gods

Earth nursed, unconscious still, the inhabiting flame,

There was a movement and a passionate call,

Some secret wing of expectation beat,

And beautiful stole across the heart of Time.

Breathed like a hidden need the soul divines;

And wonder lifted up its bardic voice.

The sun-word of an ancient mystery's sense,

Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse

Or sung like a chanted thought by the poet Fame.

Admired, unsought, intangible to the grasp

Like lightning playing with the fallen day,

No equal heart came close to join her heart,

No hero passion had the strength to seize;

A Power within her awed the imperfect flesh;

Divined the goddess in the woman's shape

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The earth-nature bound in sense-life's narrow make.

And bear not spirits lone and high who bring

Too vast for souls not born to mate with heaven.

Adored he walks in mighty solitude;

His only comrade is the Strength within.

All worshipped marvellingly, none dared to claim.

Her heart was a crowded temple of delight.

A bright pure image in a priestless shrine,

Apart in herself until her hour of fate.

END OF CANTO TWO

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