The Birth of Sin

Lucifer    Sirioth

LUCIFER

What mighty and ineffable desire

Impels thee, Sirioth? Thy accustomed calm

Is potently subverted and the eyes

That were a god's in sweet tranquillity,

Confess a human warmth, a troubled glow.

SIRIOTH

Lucifer, son of Morning, Angel! thou

Art mightiest of the architects of fate.

To thee is given with thy magic gaze

Compelling mortals as thou leanst sublime

From heaven's lucent walls, to sway the world.

Is thy felicity of lesser date,

Prince of the patient and untiring gods,

The gods who work? Dost thou not ever feel

Angelic weariness usurp the place

Where the great flame and the august desire

Were wont to urge thee on? To me it seems

That our eternity is far too long

For service and there is a word, a thought,

More godlike.

LUCIFER

Sirioth, I will speak the word.

Is it not Power?

SIRIOTH

No, Lucifer, 'tis Love.

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LUCIFER

Love? It was love that for a trillion years

Gave me the instinct and immense demand

For service, for activity. It fades.

Another and more giant passion comes

Striding upon me. I behold the world

Immeasurably vast, I see the heavens

Full of an azure joy and majesty,

I see the teeming millions of the stars.

Sirioth, how came the Master of the world

To be the master? Did He seize control

Pushing some ancient weaker sovereign down

From sway immemorable? Did He come

By peaceful ways, permission or inheritance,

To what He is today? Or if indeed

He is for ever and for ever rules,

Are there no bounds to His immense domain,

No obscure corner of unbounded space

Forgotten by His fate, that I may seize

And make myself an empire as august,

Enjoy a like eternity of rule?

SIRIOTH

Angel, these thoughts are mighty as thyself.

But wilt thou then rebel? If He be great

To conquer and to punish, what of thee?

Eternity of dreadful poignant pain

May be thy fate and not eternal rule.

LUCIFER

Better than still to serve desirelessly,

Pursued by a compulsion dull and fierce,

Looking through all vast time for one brief hour

Of rest, of respite, but instead to find

Iron necessity and pant in vain

For space, for room, for freedom.

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SIRIOTH

Thou intendest?

LUCIFER

Sirioth, I do not yet intend; I feel.

SIRIOTH

For me the sense of active force within

Set me to work, as the stars move, the sun

Resistless flames through space, the stormwind runs.

But I have felt a touch as sweet as spring,

And I have heard a music of delight

Maddening the heart with the sweet honied stabs

Of delicate intolerable joy.

Where, where is One to feel the answering bliss?

Lucifer, thou from love beganst thy toil.

What love?

LUCIFER

Desire august to help, to serve.

SIRIOTH

That is not mine. To embrace, to melt and mix

Two beings into one, to roll the spirit

Tumbling into a surge of common joy,  —

'Tis this I seek.

LUCIFER

Will He permit?

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SIRIOTH

A bar

I feel, a prohibition. Someone used

A word I could not grasp and called it sin.

LUCIFER

The word is new, even as these things are.

SIRIOTH

I know not who he was. He laughed and said,

"Sin, sin is born into the world, revolt

And change, in Sirioth and in Lucifer,

The evening and the morning star. Rejoice,

O world!" And I beheld as in a dream

Leaping from out thy brain and into mine

A woman beautiful, of grandiose mien,

Yet terrible, alarming and instinct

With nameless menace. And the world was full

With clashing and with cries. It seemed to me

Angels and Gods and men strove violently

To touch her robe, to occupy the place

Her beautiful and ominous feet had trod,

Crying, "Daughter of Lucifer, be ours,

O sweet, adorable and mighty Sin!"

Therefore I came to thee.

LUCIFER

Sirioth, await

Her birth, if she must be. For this I know,

Necessity rules all the infinite world,

And even He perhaps submits unknown

To a compulsion. When the time is ripe,

We will consult once more what we shall do.

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Epiphany

Immortal, moveless, calm, alone, august,

A silence throned, to just and to unjust

One Lord of still unutterable love,

I saw Him, Shiva, like a brooding dove

Close-winged upon her nest. The outcasts came,

The sinners gathered to that quiet flame,

The demons by the other sterner gods

Rejected from their luminous abodes

Gathered around the Refuge of the lost

Soft-smiling on that wild and grisly host.

All who were refugeless, wretched, unloved,

The wicked and the good together moved

Naturally to Him, the shelterer sweet,

And found their heaven at their Master's feet.

The vision changed and in its place there stood

A Terror red as lightning or as blood.

His strong right hand a javelin advanced

And as He shook it, earthquake stumbling danced

Across the hemisphere, ruin and plague

Rained out of heaven, disasters swift and vague

Neighboured, a marching multitude of ills.

His foot strode forward to oppress the hills,

And at the vision of His burning eyes

The hearts of men grew faint with dread surmise

Of sin and punishment. Their cry was loud,

"O master of the stormwind and the cloud,

Spare, Rudra, spare! Show us that other form

Auspicious, not incarnate wrath and storm."

The God of Force, the God of Love are one;

Not least He loves whom most He smites. Alone

Who towers above fear and plays with grief,

Defeat and death, inherits full relief

From blindness and beholds the single Form,

Love masking Terror, Peace supporting Storm.

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The Friend of Man helps him with life and death

Until he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,

Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.

He feels the joy of the immortal play;

He has the silence and the unflinching force,

He knows the oneness and the eternal course.

He too is Rudra and thunder and the Fire,

He Shiva and the white Light no shadows tire,

The Strength that rides abroad on Time's wide wings,

The Calm in the heart of all immortal things.

To R.

On Her Birthday

The repetition of thy gracious years

Brings back once more thy natal morn.

Upon the crest of youth thy life appears,  —

A wave upborne.

Amid the hundreds thronging Ocean's floor

A wave upon the crowded sea

With regular rhythm pushing towards the shore

Our life must be.

The power that moves it is the Ocean's force

Invincible, eternal, free,

And by that impulse it pursues its course

Inevitably.

We, too, by the Eternal Might are led

To whatsoever goal He wills.

Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspread

His strong breath fills.

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Exulting in the grace and strength of youth

Pursue the Ocean's distant bound,

Trusting the Pilot's voice, the Master's ruth

That rings us round.

Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell,

The storms that thunder, winds that sweep;

Always our Captain holds the rudder well,

He does not sleep.

If in the trough of the enormous sea

Thou canst not find the sky for spray,

Fear never, for our Sun is there with thee

By night and day.

Even those who sink in the victorious flood,

Where do they sink? Into His breast.

He who to some gives victory, joy and good,

To some gives rest.

But thou, look to the radiant days that wait

Beyond the driving rain and storm.

I have seen the vision of a happier fate

Brightening thy form.

Confident of His grace, expect His will;

Let Him lead; though hidden be the bourne,

See Him in all that happens; that fulfil

For which thou wert born.

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Transiit, Non Periit

(My grandfather, Rajnarain Bose,

died September 1899)

Not in annihilation lost, nor given

To darkness art thou fled from us and light,

O strong and sentient spirit; no mere heaven

Of ancient joys, no silence eremite

Received thee; but the omnipresent Thought

Of which thou wast a part and earthly hour,

Took back its gift. Into that splendour caught

Thou hast not lost thy special brightness. Power

Remains with thee and the old genial force

Unseen for blinding light, not darkly lurks:

As when a sacred river in its course

Dives into ocean, there its strength abides

Not less because with vastness wed and works

Unnoticed in the grandeur of the tides.

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