MANU

King Manu, of the Aryan peoples lord,

Greets thee, Sage.

RISHI

I know thee, King, earth to whose sleepless sword

Was heritage.

The high Sun's distant glories gave thee forth

On being's edge:

Where the slow skies of the auroral North

Lead in the morn

And flaming dawns for ever on heaven's verge

Wheel and turn,

Thundering remote the clamorous Arctic surge

Saw thee born.

There 'twas thy lot these later Fates to build,

This race of man

New-fashion. O watcher with the mountains wild,

The icy plain,

Thee I too, asleep, have watched, both when the Pole

Was brightening wan

And when like a wild beast the darkness stole

Prowling and slow

Alarming with its silent march the soul.

O King, I know

Thy purpose; for the vacant ages roll

Since man below

Conversed with God in friendship. Thou, reborn

For men perplexed,

Seekest in this dim aeon and forlorn

With evils vexed

The vanished light. For like this Arctic land

Death has annexed

To sleep, our being's summits cold and grand

Where God abides,

Repel the tread of thought. I too, O King,

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In winds and tides

Have sought Him, and in armies thundering,

And where Death strides

Over whole nations. Action, thought and peace

Were questioned, sleep,

And waking, but I had no joy of these,

Nor ponderings deep,

And pity was not sweet enough, nor good

My will could keep.

Often I found Him for a moment, stood

Astonished, then

It fell from me. I could not hold the bliss,

The force for men,

My brothers. Beauty ceased my heart to please,

Brightness in vain

Recalled the vision of the light that glows

Suns behind:

I hated the rich fragrance of the rose;

Weary and blind,

I tired of the suns and stars; then came

With broken mind

To heal me of the rash devouring flame,

The dull disease,

And sojourned with this mountain's summits bleak,

These frozen seas.

King, the blind dazzling snows have made me meek,

Cooled my unease.

Pride could not follow, nor the restless will

Come and go;

My mind within grew holy, calm and still

Like the snow.

MANU

O thou who wast with chariots formidable

And with the bow!

Voiceless and white the cold unchanging hill,

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Has it then

A mightier presence, deeper mysteries

Than human men?

The warm low hum of crowds, towns, villages,

The sun and rain,

The village maidens to the water bound,

The happy herds,

The fluting of the shepherd lads, the sound

Myriad of birds,

Speak these not clearer to the heart, convey

More subtle words?

Here is but great dumb night, an awful day

Inert and dead.

RISHI

The many's voices fill the listening ear,

Distract the head:

The One is silence; on the snows we hear

Silence tread.

MANU

What hast thou garnered from the crags that lour,

The icy field?

RISHI

O King, I spurned this body's death; a Power

There was, concealed,

That raised me. Rescued from the pleasant bars

Our longings build,

My winged soul went up above the stars

Questing for God.

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MANU

Oh, didst thou meet Him then? in what bright field

Upon thy road?

RISHI

I asked the heavenly wanderers as they wheeled

For His abode.

MANU

Could glorious Saturn and his rings of hue

Direct thy flight?

RISHI

Sun could not tell, nor any planet knew

Its source of light,

Nor could I glean that knowledge though I paced

The world's beyond

And into outer nothingness have gazed.

Time's narrow sound

I crossed, the termless flood where on the Snake

One slumbers throned,

Attempted. But the ages from Him break

Blindly and Space

Forgets its origin. Then I returned

Where luminous blaze

Deathless and ageless in their ease unearned

The ethereal race.

MANU

Did the gods tell thee? Has Varuna seen

The high God's face?

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RISHI

How shall they tell of Him who marvel at sin

And smile at grief?

MANU

Did He not send His blissful Angels down

For thy relief?

RISHI

The Angels know Him not, who fear His frown,

Have fixed belief.

MANU

Is there no heaven of eternal light

Where He is found?

RISHI

The heavens of the Three have beings bright

Their portals round,

And I have journeyed to those regions blest,

Those hills renowned.

In Vishnu's house where wide Love builds his nest,

My feet have stood.

MANU

Is he not That, the blue-winged Dove of peace,

Father of Good?

RISHI

Nor Brahma, though the suns and hills and seas

Are called his brood.

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MANU

Is God a dream then? are the heavenly coasts

Visions vain?

RISHI

I came to Shiva's roof; the flitting ghosts

Compelled me in.

MANU

Is He then God whom the forsaken seek,

Things of sin?

RISHI

He sat on being's summit grand, a peak

Immense of fire.

MANU

Knows He the secret of release from tears

And from desire?

RISHI

His voice is the last murmur silence hears,

Tranquil and dire.

MANU

The silence calls us then and shall enclose?

RISHI

Our true abode

Is here and in the pleasant house He chose

To harbour God.

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MANU

In vain thou hast travelled the unwonted stars

And the void hast trod!

RISHI

King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars

That I had fled,

To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw

How earth was made

Out of His being; I perceived the Law,

The Truth, the Vast,

From which we came and which we are; I heard

The ages past

Whisper their history, and I knew the Word

That forth was cast

Into the unformed potency of things

To build the suns.

Through endless Space and on Time's iron wings

A rhythm runs

Our lives pursue, and till the strain's complete

That now so moans

And falters, we upon this greenness meet,

That measure tread.

MANU

Is earth His seat? this body His poor hold

Infirmly made?

RISHI

I flung off matter like a robe grown old;

Matter was dead.

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MANU

Sages have told of vital force behind:

It is God then?

RISHI

The vital spirits move but as a wind

Within men.

MANU

Mind then is lord that like a sovereign sways

Delight and pain?

RISHI

Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase

Form and name.

MANU

Is Thought not He who has immortal eyes

Time cannot dim?

RISHI

Higher, O King, the still voice bade me rise

Than thought's clear dream.

Deep in the luminous secrecy, the mute

Profound of things,

Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute

And no voice sings,

Light is not, nor our darkness, nor these bright

Thunderings,

In the deep steady voiceless core of white

And burning bliss,

The sweet vast centre and the cave divine

Called Paradise,

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He dwells within us all who dwells not in

Aught that is.

MANU

Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun

Eye cannot face.

How shall our souls on that bright awful One

Hope even to gaze

Who lights the world from His eternity

With a few rays?

RISHI

Dare on thyself to look, thyself art He,

O Aryan, then.

There is no thou nor I, beasts of the field,

Nor birds, nor men,

But flickerings on a many-sided shield

Pass, or remain,

And this is winged and that with poisonous tongue

Hissing coils.

We love ourselves and hate ourselves, are wrung

With woes and toils

To slay ourselves or from ourselves to win

Shadowy spoils.

And through it all, the rumour and the din,

Voices roam,

Voices of harps, voices of rolling seas,

That rarely come

And to our inborn old affinities

Call us home.

Shadows upon the many-sided Mind

Arrive and go,

Shadows that shadows see; the vain pomps wind

Above, below,

While in their hearts the single mighty God

Whom none can know,

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Guiding the mimic squadrons with His nod

Watches it all  —

Like transient shapes that sweep with half-guessed truth

A luminous wall.

MANU

Alas! is life then vain? Our gorgeous youth

Lithe and tall,

Our sweet fair women with their tender eyes

Outshining stars,

The mighty meditations of the wise,

The grandiose wars,

The blood, the fiery strife, the clenched dead hands,

The circle sparse,

The various labour in a hundred lands,

Are all these shows

To please some audience cold? as in a vase

Lily and rose,

Mixed snow and crimson, for a moment blaze

Till someone throws

The withered petals in some outer dust,

Heeding not,  —

The virtuous man made one with the unjust,

Is this our lot?

RISHI

O King, sight is not vain, nor any sound.

Weeds that float

Upon a puddle and the majestic round

Of the suns

Are thoughts eternal,  —  what man loves to laud

And what he shuns;

Through glorious things and base the wheel of God

For ever runs.

O King, no thought is vain; our very dreams

Substantial are;

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The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams

In the star.

MANU

Rishi, are we both dreams and real? the near

Even as the far?

RISHI

Dreams are we not, O King, but see dreams, fear

Therefore and strive.

Like poets in a wondrous world of thought

Always we live,

Whose shapes from out ourselves to being brought

Abide and thrive.

The poet from his vast and labouring mind

Brings brilliant out

A living world; forth into space they wind,

The shining rout,

And hate and love, and laugh and weep, enjoy,

Fight and shout,

King, lord and beggar, tender girl and boy,

Foemen, friends;

So to His creatures God's poetic mind

A substance lends.

The Poet with dazzling inspiration blind,

Until it ends,

Forgets Himself and lives in what He forms;

For ever His soul

Through chaos like a wind creating storms,

Till the stars roll

Through ordered space and the green lands arise,

The snowy Pole,

Ocean and this great heaven full of eyes,

And sweet sounds heard,

Man with his wondrous soul of hate and love,

And beast and bird,  —

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