{"id":2447,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2447"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:40","slug":"04-canto-four-the-secret-knowledge-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/04-canto-four-the-secret-knowledge-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-04_Canto Four – The Secret Knowledge.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t
\nCanto Four <\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe Secret Knowledge<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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O<\/font>N A<\/b> height he stood that looked towards greater heights.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur early approaches to the Infinite<\/p>\n

Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhile lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.<\/p>\n

What now we see is a shadow of what must come.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe earth’s uplook to a remote Unknown<\/p>\n

Is a preface only of the epic climb<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf human soul from its flat earthly state<\/p>\n

To the discovery of a greater self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the far gleam of an eternal Light.<\/p>\n

This world is a beginning and a base<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;<\/p>\n

An unborn Power must build reality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA deathbound littleness is not all we are:<\/p>\n

Immortal our forgotten vastnesses<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwait discovery in our summit selves;<\/p>\n

Unmeasured breadths and depths of being are ours.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAkin to the ineffable Secrecy,<\/p>\n

Mystic, eternal in unrealised Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNeighbours of Heaven are Nature’s altitudes.<\/p>\n

To these high-peaked dominions sealed to our search,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tToo far from surface Nature’s postal routes,<\/p>\n

Too lofty for our mortal lives to breathe,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDeep in us a forgotten kinship points<\/p>\n

And a faint voice of ecstasy and prayer<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalls to those lucent lost immensities.<\/p>\n

Even when we fail to look into our souls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr lie embedded in earthly consciousness,<\/p>\n

Still have we parts that grow towards the light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet are there luminous tracts and heavens serene<\/p>\n

And Eldorados of splendour and ecstasy<\/p>\n

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And temples to the godhead none can see.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA shapeless memory lingers in us still<\/p>\n

And sometimes, when our sight is turned within,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth’s ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;<\/p>\n

There is a short miraculous escape.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis narrow fringe of clamped experience<\/p>\n

We leave behind meted to us as life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur little walks, our insufficient reach.<\/p>\n

Our souls can visit in great lonely hours<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill regions of imperishable Light,<\/p>\n

All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss<\/p>\n

And calm immensities of spirit space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the unfolding process of the Self<\/p>\n

Sometimes the inexpressible Mystery<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tElects a human vessel of descent.<\/p>\n

A breath comes down from a supernal air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Presence is born, a guiding Light awakes,<\/p>\n

A stillness falls upon the instruments:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFixed, motionless like a marble monument,<\/p>\n

Stone-calm, the body is a pedestal<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSupporting a figure of eternal Peace.<\/p>\n

Or a revealing Force sweeps blazing in;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of some vast superior continent<\/p>\n

Knowledge breaks through trailing its radiant seas,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Nature trembles with the power, the flame.<\/p>\n

A greater Personality sometimes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPossesses us which yet we know is ours:<\/p>\n

Or we adore the Master of our souls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen the small bodily ego thins and falls;<\/p>\n

No more insisting on its separate self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLosing the punctilio of its separate birth,<\/p>\n

It leaves us one with Nature and with God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn moments when the inner lamps are lit<\/p>\n

And the life’s cherished guests are left outside,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.<\/p>\n

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A wider consciousness opens then its doors;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvading from spiritual silences<\/p>\n

A ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo commune with our seized illumined clay<\/p>\n

And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the oblivious field of mortal mind,<\/p>\n

Revealed to the closed prophet eyes of trance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr in some deep internal solitude<\/p>\n

Witnessed by a strange immaterial sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe signals of eternity appear.<\/p>\n

The truth mind could not know unveils its face,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe hear what mortal ears have never heard,<\/p>\n

We feel what earthly sense has never felt,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe love what common hearts repel and dread;<\/p>\n

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Voice calls from the chambers of the soul;<\/p>\n

We meet the ecstasy of the Godhead’s touch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn golden privacies of immortal fire.<\/p>\n

These signs are native to a larger self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat lives within us by ourselves unseen;<\/p>\n

Only sometimes a holier influence comes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA tide of mightier surgings bears our lives<\/p>\n

And a diviner Presence moves the soul;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr through the earthly coverings something breaks,<\/p>\n

A grace and beauty of spiritual light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe murmuring tongue of a celestial fire.<\/p>\n

Ourself and a high stranger whom we feel,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is and acts unseen as if it were not;<\/p>\n

It follows the line of sempiternal birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet seems to perish with its mortal frame.<\/p>\n

Assured of the Apocalypse to be,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt reckons not the moments and the hours;<\/p>\n

Great, patient, calm it sees the centuries pass,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwaiting the slow miracle of our change<\/p>\n

In the sure deliberate process of world-force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the long march of all-revealing Time.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\tIt is the origin and the master-clue,<\/p>\n

A silence overhead, an inner voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA living image seated in the heart,<\/p>\n

An unwalled wideness and a fathomless point,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe truth of all these cryptic shows in Space,<\/p>\n

The Real towards which our strivings move,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe secret grandiose meaning of our lives.<\/p>\n

A treasure of honey in the combs of God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,<\/p>\n

It is our glory of the flame of God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur golden fountain of the world’s delight,<\/p>\n

An immortality cowled in the cape of death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe shape of our unborn divinity.<\/p>\n

It guards for us our fate in depths within<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere sleeps the eternal seed of transient things.<\/p>\n

Always we bear in us a magic key<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConcealed in life’s hermetic envelope.<\/p>\n

A burning Witness in the sanctuary<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRegards through Time and the blind walls of Form;<\/p>\n

A timeless Light is in his hidden eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe sees the secret things no words can speak<\/p>\n

And knows the goal of the unconscious world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the heart of the mystery of the journeying years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut all is screened, subliminal, mystical;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn,<\/p>\n

It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tElse to our waking mind’s small moment look<\/p>\n

A goalless voyage seems our dubious course<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome Chance has settled or hazarded some Will,<\/p>\n

Or a Necessity without aim or cause<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnwillingly compelled to emerge and be.<\/p>\n

In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur very being seems to us questionable,<\/p>\n

Our life a vague experiment, the soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA flickering light in a strange ignorant world,<\/p>\n

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The earth a brute mechanic accident,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA net of death in which by chance we live.<\/p>\n

All we have learned appears a doubtful guess,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe achievement done a passage or a phase<\/p>\n

Whose farther end is hidden from our sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA chance happening or a fortuitous fate.<\/p>\n

Out of the unknown we move to the unknown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEver surround our brief existence here<\/p>\n

Grey shadows of unanswered questionings;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe dark Inconscient’s signless mysteries<\/p>\n

Stand up unsolved behind Fate’s starting-line.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn aspiration in the Night’s profound,<\/p>\n

Seed of a perishing body and half-lit mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUplifts its lonely tongue of conscious fire<\/p>\n

Towards an undying Light for ever lost;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly it hears, sole echo of its call,<\/p>\n

The dim reply in man’s unknowing heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd meets, not understanding why it came<\/p>\n

Or for what reason is the suffering here,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGod’s sanction to the paradox of life<\/p>\n

And the riddle of the Immortal’s birth in Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlong a path of aeons serpentine<\/p>\n

In the coiled blackness of her nescient course<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.<\/p>\n

A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,<\/p>\n

A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her unconscious orbit through the Void<\/p>\n

Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;<\/p>\n

A Thought that can conceive but hardly knows<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArises slowly in her and creates<\/p>\n

The idea, the speech that labels more than it lights;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA trembling gladness that is less than bliss<\/p>\n

Invades from all this beauty that must die.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlarmed by the sorrow dragging at her feet<\/p>\n

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And conscious of the high things not yet won,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEver she nurses in her sleepless breast<\/p>\n

An inward urge that takes from her rest and peace.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIgnorant and weary and invincible,<\/p>\n

She seeks through the soul’s war and quivering pain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe pure perfection her marred nature needs,<\/p>\n

A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA faith she craves that can survive defeat,<\/p>\n

The sweetness of a love that knows not death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe radiance of a truth for ever sure.<\/p>\n

A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer state she learns to read and the act she has done,<\/p>\n

But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHerself and all of which she is the sign.<\/p>\n

An inarticulate whisper drives her steps<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf which she feels the force but not the sense;<\/p>\n

A few rare intimations come as guides,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmense divining flashes cleave her brain,<\/p>\n

And sometimes in her hours of dream and muse<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe truth that she has missed looks out on her<\/p>\n

As if far off and yet within her soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA change comes near that flees from her surmise<\/p>\n

And, ever postponed, compels attempt and hope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet seems too great for mortal hope to dare.<\/p>\n

A vision meets her of supernal Powers<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost<\/p>\n

Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen is she moved to all that she is not<\/p>\n

And stretches arms to what was never hers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOutstretching arms to the unconscious Void,<\/p>\n

Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSoliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time<\/p>\n

What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Mind unvisited by illusion’s gleams,<\/p>\n

A Will expressive of soul’s deity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,<\/p>\n

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A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor these she yearns and feels them destined hers:<\/p>\n

Heaven’s privilege she claims as her own right.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tJust is her claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,<\/p>\n

Clear in a greater light than reason owns:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur intuitions are its title-deeds;<\/p>\n

Our souls accept what our blind thoughts refuse.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth’s winged chimaeras are Truth’s steeds in Heaven,<\/p>\n

The impossible God’s sign of things to be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut few can look beyond the present state<\/p>\n

Or overleap this matted hedge of sense.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll that transpires on earth and all beyond<\/p>\n

Are parts of an illimitable plan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe One keeps in his heart and knows alone.<\/p>\n

Our outward happenings have their seed within,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd even this random Fate that imitates Chance,<\/p>\n

This mass of unintelligible results,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAre the dumb graph of truths that work unseen:<\/p>\n

The laws of the Unknown create the known.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe events that shape the appearance of our lives<\/p>\n

Are a cipher of subliminal quiverings<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich rarely we surprise or vaguely feel,<\/p>\n

Are an outcome of suppressed realities<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat hardly rise into material day:<\/p>\n

They are born from the spirit’s sun of hidden powers<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDigging a tunnel through emergency.<\/p>\n

But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd learn what deep necessity of the soul<\/p>\n

Determined casual deed and consequence?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbsorbed in a routine of daily acts,<\/p>\n

Our eyes are fixed on an external scene;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe hear the crash of the wheels of Circumstance<\/p>\n

And wonder at the hidden cause of things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet a foreseeing Knowledge might be ours,<\/p>\n

If we could take our spirit’s stand within,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf we could hear the muffled daemon voice.<\/p>\n

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Too seldom is the shadow of what must come<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCast in an instant on the secret sense<\/p>\n

Which feels the shock of the invisible,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd seldom in the few who answer give<\/p>\n

The mighty process of the cosmic Will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCommunicates its image to our sight,<\/p>\n

Identifying the world’s mind with ours.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur range is fixed within the crowded arc<\/p>\n

Of what we observe and touch and thought can guess<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd rarely dawns the light of the Unknown<\/p>\n

Waking in us the prophet and the seer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe outward and the immediate are our field,<\/p>\n

The dead past is our background and support;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind keeps the soul prisoner, we are slaves to our acts;<\/p>\n

We cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom’s sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInheritor of the brief animal mind,<\/p>\n

Man, still a child in Nature’s mighty hands,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the succession of the moments lives;<\/p>\n

To a changing present is his narrow right;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis memory stares back at a phantom past,<\/p>\n

The future flees before him as he moves;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe sees imagined garments, not a face.<\/p>\n

Armed with a limited precarious strength,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe saves his fruits of work from adverse chance.<\/p>\n

A struggling ignorance is his wisdom’s mate:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe waits to see the consequence of his acts,<\/p>\n

He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe knows not what he shall achieve or when;<\/p>\n

He knows not whether at last he shall survive,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr end like the mastodon and the sloth<\/p>\n

And perish from the earth where he was king.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is ignorant of the meaning of his life,<\/p>\n

He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly the Immortals on their deathless heights<\/p>\n

Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMasters of living, free from the bonds of Thought,<\/p>\n

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Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd experts of the theorem of world-need,<\/p>\n

Can see the Idea, the Might that change Time’s course,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCome maned with light from undiscovered worlds,<\/p>\n

Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,<\/p>\n

Bearing the superhuman Rider, near<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd, impassive to earth’s din and startled cry,<\/p>\n

Return to the silence of the hills of God;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass<\/p>\n

And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbove the world the world-creators stand,<\/p>\n

In the phenomenon see its mystic source.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese heed not the deceiving outward play,<\/p>\n

They turn not to the moment’s busy tramp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut listen with the still patience of the Unborn<\/p>\n

For the slow footsteps of far Destiny<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tApproaching through huge distances of Time,<\/p>\n

Unmarked by the eye that sees effect and cause,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnheard mid the clamour of the human plane.<\/p>\n

Attentive to an unseen Truth they seize<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sound as of invisible augur wings,<\/p>\n

Voices of an unplumbed significance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMutterings that brood in the core of Matter’s sleep.<\/p>\n

In the heart’s profound audition they can catch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe murmurs lost by Life’s uncaring ear,<\/p>\n

A prophet-speech in Thought’s omniscient trance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbove the illusion of the hopes that pass,<\/p>\n

Behind the appearance and the overt act,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBehind this clock-work Chance and vague surmise,<\/p>\n

Amid the wrestle of force, the trampling feet,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the cries of anguish and of joy,<\/p>\n

Across the triumph, fighting and despair,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey watch the Bliss for which earth’s heart has cried<\/p>\n

On the long road which cannot see its end<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWinding undetected through the sceptic days<\/p>\n

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And to meet it guide the unheedful moving world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.<\/p>\n

When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,<\/p>\n

As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf one who steps unseen into his house.<\/p>\n

A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,<\/p>\n

A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd beauty conquer the resisting world,<\/p>\n

The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA stealth of God compel the heart to bliss<\/p>\n

And earth grow unexpectedly divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,<\/p>\n

In body and body kindled the sacred birth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNight shall awake to the anthem of the stars,<\/p>\n

The days become a happy pilgrim march,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur will a force of the Eternal’s power,<\/p>\n

And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA few shall see what none yet understands;<\/p>\n

God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor man shall not know the coming till its hour<\/p>\n

And belief shall be not till the work is done.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Consciousness that knows not its own truth,<\/p>\n

A vagrant hunter of misleading dawns,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBetween the being’s dark and luminous ends<\/p>\n

Moves here in a half-light that seems the whole:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn interregnum in Reality<\/p>\n

Cuts off the integral Thought, the total Power;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt circles or stands in a vague interspace,<\/p>\n

Doubtful of its beginning and its close,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr runs upon a road that has no end;<\/p>\n

Far from the original Dusk, the final Flame<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn some huge void Inconscience it lives,<\/p>\n

Like a thought persisting in a wide emptiness.<\/p>\n

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As if an unintelligible phrase<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSuggested a million renderings to the Mind,<\/p>\n

It lends a purport to a random world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA conjecture leaning upon doubtful proofs,<\/p>\n

A message misunderstood, a thought confused<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMissing its aim is all that it can speak<\/p>\n

Or a fragment of the universal word.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt leaves two giant letters void of sense<\/p>\n

While without sanction turns the middle sign<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCarrying an enigmatic universe,<\/p>\n

As if a present without future or past<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRepeating the same revolution’s whirl<\/p>\n

Turned on its axis in its own Inane.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus is the meaning of creation veiled;<\/p>\n

For without context reads the cosmic page:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts signs stare at us like an unknown script,<\/p>\n

As if appeared screened by a foreign tongue<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr code of splendour signs without a key<\/p>\n

A portion of a parable sublime.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt wears to the perishable creature’s eyes<\/p>\n

The grandeur of a useless miracle;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWasting itself that it may last awhile,<\/p>\n

A river that can never find its sea,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt runs through life and death on an edge of Time;<\/p>\n

A fire in the Night is its mighty action’s blaze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is our deepest need to join once more<\/p>\n

What now is parted, opposite and twain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRemote in sovereign spheres that never meet<\/p>\n

Or fronting like far poles of Night and Day.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe must fill the immense lacuna we have made,<\/p>\n

Re-wed the closed finite’s lonely consonant<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWith the open vowels of Infinity,<\/p>\n

A hyphen must connect Matter and Mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe narrow isthmus of the ascending soul:<\/p>\n

We must renew the secret bond in things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur hearts recall the lost divine Idea,<\/p>\n

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Reconstitute the perfect word, unite<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Alpha and the Omega in one sound;<\/p>\n

Then shall the Spirit and Nature be at one.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTwo are the ends of the mysterious plan.<\/p>\n

In the wide signless ether of the Self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the unchanging Silence white and nude,<\/p>\n

Aloof, resplendent like gold dazzling suns<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVeiled by the ray no mortal eye can bear,<\/p>\n

The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBurn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.<\/p>\n

A rapture and a radiance and a hush,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDelivered from the approach of wounded hearts,<\/p>\n

Denied to the Idea that looks at grief,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRemote from the Force that cries out in its pain,<\/p>\n

In his inalienable bliss they live.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmaculate in self-knowledge and self-power,<\/p>\n

Calm they repose on the eternal Will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly his law they count and him obey;<\/p>\n

They have no goal to reach, no aim to serve.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImplacable in their timeless purity,<\/p>\n

All barter or bribe of worship they refuse;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnmoved by cry of revolt and ignorant prayer<\/p>\n

They reckon not our virtue and our sin;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey bend not to the voices that implore,<\/p>\n

They hold no traffic with error and its reign;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey are guardians of the silence of the Truth,<\/p>\n

They are keepers of the immutable decree.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA deep surrender is their source of might,<\/p>\n

A still identity their way to know,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMotionless is their action like a sleep.<\/p>\n

At peace, regarding the trouble beneath the stars,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDeathless, watching the works of Death and Chance,<\/p>\n

Immobile, seeing the millenniums pass,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUntouched while the long map of Fate unrolls,<\/p>\n

They look on our struggle with impartial eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd yet without them cosmos could not be.<\/p>\n

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Impervious to desire and doom and hope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir station of inviolable might<\/p>\n

Moveless upholds the world’s enormous task,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts ignorance is by their knowledge lit,<\/p>\n

Its yearning lasts by their indifference.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs the height draws the low ever to climb,<\/p>\n

As the breadths draw the small to adventure vast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir aloofness drives man to surpass himself.<\/p>\n

Our passion heaves to wed the Eternal’s calm,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur dwarf-search mind to meet the Omniscient’s light,<\/p>\n

Our helpless hearts to enshrine the Omnipotent’s force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcquiescing in the wisdom that made hell<\/p>\n

And the harsh utility of death and tears,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcquiescing in the gradual steps of Time,<\/p>\n

Careless they seem of the grief that stings the world’s heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCareless of the pain that rends its body and life;<\/p>\n

Above joy and sorrow is that grandeur’s walk:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey have no portion in the good that dies,<\/p>\n

Mute, pure, they share not in the evil done;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tElse might their strength be marred and could not save.<\/p>\n

Alive to the truth that dwells in God’s extremes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwake to a motion of all-seeing Force,<\/p>\n

The slow outcome of the long ambiguous years<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the unexpected good from woeful deeds,<\/p>\n

The immortal sees not as we vainly see.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe looks on hidden aspects and screened powers,<\/p>\n

He knows the law and natural line of things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUndriven by a brief life’s will to act,<\/p>\n

Unharassed by the spur of pity and fear,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe makes no haste to untie the cosmic knot<\/p>\n

Or the world’s torn jarring heart to reconcile.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Time he waits for the Eternal’s hour.<\/p>\n

Yet a spiritual secret aid is there;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhile a tardy Evolution’s coils wind on<\/p>\n

And Nature hews her way through adamant<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA divine intervention thrones above.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\tAlive in a dead rotating universe<\/p>\n

We whirl not here upon a casual globe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbandoned to a task beyond our force;<\/p>\n

Even through the tangled anarchy called Fate<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd through the bitterness of death and fall<\/p>\n

An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;<\/p>\n

In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe one inevitable supreme result<\/p>\n

No will can take away and no doom change,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe crown of conscious Immortality,<\/p>\n

The godhead promised to our struggling souls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen first man’s heart dared death and suffered life.<\/p>\n

One who has shaped this world is ever its lord:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur errors are his steps upon the way;<\/p>\n

He works through the fierce vicissitudes of our lives,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe works through the hard breath of battle and toil,<\/p>\n

He works through our sins and sorrows and our tears,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis knowledge overrules our nescience;<\/p>\n

Whatever the appearance we must bear,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhatever our strong ills and present fate,<\/p>\n

When nothing we can see but drift and bale,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mighty Guidance leads us still through all.<\/p>\n

After we have served this great divided world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGod’s bliss and oneness are our inborn right.<\/p>\n

A date is fixed in the calendar of the Unknown,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn anniversary of the Birth sublime:<\/p>\n

Our soul shall justify its chequered walk,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll will come near that now is naught or far.<\/p>\n

These calm and distant Mights shall act at last.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmovably ready for their destined task,<\/p>\n

The ever-wise compassionate Brilliances<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwait the sound of the Incarnate’s voice<\/p>\n

To leap and bridge the chasms of Ignorance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd heal the hollow yearning gulfs of Life<\/p>\n

And fill the abyss that is the universe.<\/p>\n

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Here meanwhile at the Spirit’s opposite pole<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the mystery of the deeps that God has built<\/p>\n

For his abode below the Thinker’s sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this compromise of a stark absolute Truth<\/p>\n

With the Light that dwells near the dark end of things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this tragi-comedy of divine disguise,<\/p>\n

This long far seeking for joy ever near,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the grandiose dream of which the world is made,<\/p>\n

In this gold dome on a black dragon base,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe conscious Force that acts in Nature’s breast,<\/p>\n

A dark-robed labourer in the cosmic scheme<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCarrying clay images of unborn gods,<\/p>\n

Executrix of the inevitable Idea<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHampered, enveloped by the hoops of Fate,<\/p>\n

Patient trustee of slow eternal Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbsolves from hour to hour her secret charge.<\/p>\n

All she foresees in masked imperative depths;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe dumb intention of the unconscious gulfs<\/p>\n

Answers to a will that sees upon the heights,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the evolving Word’s first syllable<\/p>\n

Ponderous, brute-sensed, contains its luminous close,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPrivy to a summit victory’s vast descent<\/p>\n

And the portent of the soul’s immense uprise.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll here where each thing seems its lonely self<\/p>\n

Are figures of the sole transcendent One:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly by him they are, his breath is their life;<\/p>\n

An unseen Presence moulds the oblivious clay.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA playmate in the mighty Mother’s game,<\/p>\n

One came upon the dubious whirling globe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo hide from her pursuit in force and form.<\/p>\n

A secret spirit in the Inconscient’s sleep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA shapeless Energy, a voiceless Word,<\/p>\n

He was here before the elements could emerge,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBefore there was light of mind or life could breathe.<\/p>\n

Accomplice of her cosmic huge pretence,<\/p>\n

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His semblances he turns to real shapes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd makes the symbol equal with the truth:<\/p>\n

He gives to his timeless thoughts a form in Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the substance, he the self of things;<\/p>\n

She has forged from him her works of skill and might:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe wraps him in the magic of her moods<\/p>\n

And makes of his myriad truths her countless dreams.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Master of being has come down to her,<\/p>\n

An immortal child born in the fugitive years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn objects wrought, in the persons she conceives,<\/p>\n

Dreaming she chases her idea of him,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd catches here a look and there a gest:<\/p>\n

Ever he repeats in them his ceaseless births.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the Maker and the world he made,<\/p>\n

He is the vision and he is the Seer;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is himself the actor and the act,<\/p>\n

He is himself the knower and the known,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is himself the dreamer and the dream.<\/p>\n

There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met<\/p>\n

And light and darkness are their eyes’ interchange;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace,<\/p>\n

Our deeds, our hopes are intimate to their tale;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey are married secretly in our thought and life.<\/p>\n

The universe is an endless masquerade:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor nothing here is utterly what it seems;<\/p>\n

It is a dream-fact vision of a truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich but for the dream would not be wholly true,<\/p>\n

A phenomenon stands out significant<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAgainst dim backgrounds of eternity;<\/p>\n

We accept its face and pass by all it means;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA part is seen, we take it for the whole.<\/p>\n

Thus have they made their play with us for roles:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAuthor and actor with himself as scene,<\/p>\n

He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHere on the earth where we must fill our parts,<\/p>\n

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We know not how shall run the drama’s course;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur uttered sentences veil in their thought.<\/p>\n

Her mighty plan she holds back from our sight:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe has concealed her glory and her bliss<\/p>\n

And disguised the Love and Wisdom in her heart;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf all the marvel and beauty that are hers,<\/p>\n

Only a darkened little we can feel.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe too wears a diminished godhead here;<\/p>\n

He has forsaken his omnipotence,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis calm he has foregone and infinity.<\/p>\n

He knows her only, he has forgotten himself;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo her he abandons all to make her great.<\/p>\n

He hopes in her to find himself anew,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIncarnate, wedding his infinity’s peace<\/p>\n

To her creative passion’s ecstasy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough possessor of the earth and heavens,<\/p>\n

He leaves to her the cosmic management<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd watches all, the Witness of her scene.<\/p>\n

A supernumerary on her stage,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe speaks no words or hides behind the wings.<\/p>\n

He takes birth in her world, waits on her will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDivines her enigmatic gesture’s sense,<\/p>\n

The fluctuating chance turns of her mood,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWorks out her meanings she seems not to know<\/p>\n

And serves her secret purpose in long Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs one too great for him he worships her;<\/p>\n

He adores her as his regent of desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe yields to her as the mover of his will,<\/p>\n

He burns the incense of his nights and days<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOffering his life, a splendour of sacrifice.<\/p>\n

A rapt solicitor for her love and grace,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis bliss in her to him is his whole world:<\/p>\n

He grows through her in all his being’s powers;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe reads by her God’s hidden aim in things.<\/p>\n

Or, a courtier in her countless retinue,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tContent to be with her and feel her near<\/p>\n

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He makes the most of the little that she gives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd all she does drapes with his own delight.<\/p>\n

A glance can make his whole day wonderful,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA word from her lips with happiness wings the hours.<\/p>\n

He leans on her for all he does and is:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days<\/p>\n

And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd suns in the glory of her passing smile.<\/p>\n

In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe makes the hours pivot around her will,<\/p>\n

Makes all reflect her whims; all is their play:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis whole wide world is only he and she.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the knot that ties together the stars:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Two who are one are the secret of all power,<\/p>\n

The Two who are one are the might and right in things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis soul, silent, supports the world and her,<\/p>\n

His acts are her commandment’s registers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHappy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:<\/p>\n

His breast he offers for her cosmic dance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf which our lives are the quivering theatre,<\/p>\n

And none could bear but for his strength within,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet none would leave because of his delight.<\/p>\n

His works, his thoughts have been devised by her,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis being is a mirror vast of hers:<\/p>\n

Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis deeds obey her heart’s unspoken demands:<\/p>\n

Passive, he bears the impacts of the world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if her touches shaping his soul and life:<\/p>\n

His journey through the days is her sun-march;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe runs upon her roads; hers is his course.<\/p>\n

A witness and student of her joy and dole,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA partner in her evil and her good,<\/p>\n

He has consented to her passionate ways,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is driven by her sweet and dreadful force.<\/p>\n

His sanctioning name initials all her works;<\/p>\n

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His silence is his signature to her deeds;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the execution of her drama’s scheme,<\/p>\n

In her fancies of the moment and its mood,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the march of this obvious ordinary world<\/p>\n

Where all is deep and strange to the eyes that see<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Nature’s common forms are marvel-wefts,<\/p>\n

She through his witness sight and motion of might<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnrolls the material of her cosmic Act,<\/p>\n

Her happenings that exalt and smite the soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer force that moves, her powers that save and slay,<\/p>\n

Her Word that in the silence speaks to our hearts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer silence that transcends the summit Word,<\/p>\n

Her heights and depths to which our spirit moves,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer events that weave the texture of our lives<\/p>\n

And all by which we find or lose ourselves,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThings sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean,<\/p>\n

Things terrible and beautiful and divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer empire in the cosmos she has built,<\/p>\n

He is governed by her subtle and mighty laws.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis consciousness is a babe upon her knees,<\/p>\n

His being a field of her vast experiment,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer endless space is the playground of his thoughts;<\/p>\n

She binds to knowledge of the shapes of Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the creative error of limiting mind<\/p>\n

And chance that wears the rigid face of fate<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her sport of death and pain and Nescience,<\/p>\n

His changed and struggling immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis soul is a subtle atom in a mass,<\/p>\n

His substance a material for her works.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis spirit survives amid the death of things,<\/p>\n

He climbs to eternity through being’s gaps,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is carried by her from Night to deathless Light.<\/p>\n

This grand surrender is his free-will’s gift,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis pure transcendent force submits to hers.<\/p>\n

In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the insoluble riddle of her play,<\/p>\n

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A creature made of perishable stuff,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the pattern she has set for him he moves,<\/p>\n

He thinks with her thoughts, with her trouble his bosom heaves;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe seems the thing that she would have him seem,<\/p>\n

He is whatever her artist will can make.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough she drives him on her fancy’s roads,<\/p>\n

At play with him as with her child or slave,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo freedom and the Eternal’s mastery<\/p>\n

And immortality’s stand above the world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe moves her seeming puppet of an hour.<\/p>\n

Even in his mortal session in body’s house,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn aimless traveller between birth and death,<\/p>\n

Ephemeral dreaming of immortality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers;<\/p>\n

He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis face of human thought puts on a crown.<\/p>\n

Held in her leash, bound to her veiled caprice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe studies her ways if so he may prevail<\/p>\n

Even for an hour and she work out his will;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe makes of her his moment passion’s serf:<\/p>\n

To obey she feigns, she follows her creature’s lead:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor him she was made, lives only for his use.<\/p>\n

But conquering her, then is he most her slave;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is her dependent, all his means are hers;<\/p>\n

Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt last he wakes to a memory of Self:<\/p>\n

He sees within the face of deity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Godhead breaks out through the human mould:<\/p>\n

Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTill then he is a plaything in her game;<\/p>\n

Her seeming regent, yet her fancy’s toy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA living robot moved by her energy’s springs,<\/p>\n

He acts as in the movements of a dream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn automaton stepping in the grooves of Fate,<\/p>\n

He stumbles on driven by her whip of Force:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis thought labours, a bullock in Time’s fields;<\/p>\n

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His will he thinks his own, is shaped in her forge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tObedient to World-Nature’s dumb control,<\/p>\n

Driven by his own formidable Power,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis chosen partner in a titan game,<\/p>\n

Her will he has made the master of his fate,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer whim the dispenser of his pleasure and pain;<\/p>\n

He has sold himself into her regal power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor any blow or boon that she may choose:<\/p>\n

Even in what is suffering to our sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,<\/p>\n

In all experience meets her blissful hands;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn his heart he bears the happiness of her tread<\/p>\n

And the surprise of her arrival’s joy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn each event and every moment’s chance.<\/p>\n

All she can do is marvellous in his sight:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,<\/p>\n

A tireless amateur of her world-delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe rejoices in her every thought and act<\/p>\n

And gives consent to all that she can wish;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhatever she desires he wills to be:<\/p>\n

The Spirit, the innumerable One,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has left behind his lone eternity,<\/p>\n

He is an endless birth in endless Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer finite’s multitude in an infinite Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe master of existence lurks in us<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;<\/p>\n

In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Immanent lives in man as in his house;<\/p>\n

He has made the universe his pastime’s field,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vast gymnasium of his works of might.<\/p>\n

All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDivine, wears shapes of animal or man;<\/p>\n

Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmortal, dallies with mortality.<\/p>\n

The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIncarnate in a world of strife and pain,<\/p>\n

He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd drinks experience like a strengthening wine.<\/p>\n

He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPrescient now dwells in our subliminal depths,<\/p>\n

A luminous individual Power, alone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone<\/p>\n

Has called out of the Silence his mute Force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere she lay in the featureless and formless hush<\/p>\n

Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ineffable puissance of his solitude.<\/p>\n

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHas entered with his silence into space:<\/p>\n

He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has built a million figures of his power;<\/p>\n

He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSpace is himself and Time is only he.<\/p>\n

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOne who is in us as our secret self,<\/p>\n

Our mask of imperfection has assumed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has made this tenement of flesh his own,<\/p>\n

His image in the human measure cast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat to his divine measure we might rise;<\/p>\n

Then in a figure of divinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Maker shall recast us and impose<\/p>\n

A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLifting our finite minds to his infinite,<\/p>\n

Touching the moment with eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:<\/p>\n

A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis nature we must put on as he put ours;<\/p>\n

We are sons of God and must be even as he:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis human portion, we must grow divine.<\/p>\n

Our life is a paradox with God for key.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tBut meanwhile all is a shadow cast by a dream<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd to the musing and immobile spirit<\/p>\n

Life and himself don the aspect of a myth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe burden of a long unmeaning tale.<\/p>\n

For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe secret God beneath the threshold dwells.<\/p>\n

In a body obscuring the immortal Spirit<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA nameless Resident vesting unseen powers<\/p>\n

With Matter’s shapes and motives beyond thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the hazard of an unguessed consequence,<\/p>\n

An omnipotent indiscernible Influence,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe sits, unfelt by the form in which he lives<\/p>\n

And veils his knowledge by the groping mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA wanderer in a world his thoughts have made,<\/p>\n

He turns in a chiaroscuro of error and truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo find a wisdom that on high is his.<\/p>\n

As one forgetting he searches for himself;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if he had lost an inner light he seeks:<\/p>\n

As a sojourner lingering amid alien scenes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe journeys to a home he knows no more.<\/p>\n

His own self’s truth he seeks who is the Truth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the Player who became the play,<\/p>\n

He is the Thinker who became the thought;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the many who was the silent One.<\/p>\n

In the symbol figures of the cosmic Force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd in her living and inanimate signs<\/p>\n

And in her complex tracery of events<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe explores the ceaseless miracle of himself,<\/p>\n

Till the thousandfold enigma has been solved<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the single light of an all-witnessing Soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis was his compact with his mighty mate,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor love of her and joined to her for ever<\/p>\n

To follow the course of Time’s eternity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmid magic dramas of her sudden moods<\/p>\n

And the surprises of her masked Idea<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the vicissitudes of her vast caprice.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tTwo seem his goals, yet ever are they one<\/p>\n

And gaze at each other over bourneless Time;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSpirit and Matter are their end and source.<\/p>\n

A seeker of hidden meanings in life’s forms,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf the great Mother’s wide uncharted will<\/p>\n

And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the explorer and the mariner<\/p>\n

On a secret inner ocean without bourne:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the adventurer and cosmologist<\/p>\n

Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her material order’s fixed design<\/p>\n

Where all seems sure and, even when changed, the same,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven though the end is left for ever unknown<\/p>\n

And ever unstable is life’s shifting flow,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis paths are found for him by silent fate;<\/p>\n

As stations in the ages’ weltering flood<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFirm lands appear that tempt and stay awhile,<\/p>\n

Then new horizons lure the mind’s advance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere comes no close to the finite’s boundlessness,<\/p>\n

There is no last certitude in which thought can pause<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd no terminus to the soul’s experience.<\/p>\n

A limit, a farness never wholly reached,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn unattained perfection calls to him<\/p>\n

From distant boundaries in the Unseen:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA long beginning only has been made.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the sailor on the flow of Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is World-Matter’s slow discoverer,<\/p>\n

Who, launched into this small corporeal birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHas learned his craft in tiny bays of self,<\/p>\n

But dares at last unplumbed infinitudes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA voyager upon eternity’s seas.<\/p>\n

In his world-adventure’s crude initial start<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBehold him ignorant of his godhead’s force,<\/p>\n

Timid initiate of its vast design.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn expert captain of a fragile craft,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

A trafficker in small impermanent wares,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt first he hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,<\/p>\n

Dares not to affront the far-off perilous main.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe in a petty coastal traffic plies,<\/p>\n

His pay doled out from port to neighbour port,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tContent with his safe round’s unchanging course,<\/p>\n

He hazards not the new and the unseen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut now he hears the sound of larger seas.<\/p>\n

A widening world calls him to distant scenes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd journeyings in a larger vision’s arc<\/p>\n

And peoples unknown and still unvisited shores.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn a commissioned keel his merchant hull<\/p>\n

Serves the world’s commerce in the riches of Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSevering the foam of a great land-locked sea<\/p>\n

To reach unknown harbour lights in distant climes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd open markets for life’s opulent arts,<\/p>\n

Rich bales, carved statuettes, hued canvases,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd jewelled toys brought for an infant’s play<\/p>\n

And perishable products of hard toil<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd transient splendours won and lost by the days.<\/p>\n

Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVenturing not yet to cross oceans unnamed<\/p>\n

And journey into a dream of distances<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe travels close to unfamiliar coasts<\/p>\n

And finds new haven in storm-troubled isles,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr, guided by a sure compass in his thought,<\/p>\n

He plunges through a bright haze that hides the stars,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSteering on the trade-routes of Ignorance.<\/p>\n

His prow pushes towards undiscovered shores,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe chances on unimagined continents:<\/p>\n

A seeker of the islands of the Blest,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,<\/p>\n

He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife changes for him its time-constructed scenes,<\/p>\n

Its images veiling infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth’s borders recede and the terrestrial air<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has crossed the limit of mortal thought and hope,<\/p>\n

He has reached the world’s end and stares beyond;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze<\/p>\n

Into Eyes that look upon eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA greater world Time’s traveller must explore.<\/p>\n

At last he hears a chanting on the heights<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the far speaks and the unknown grows near:<\/p>\n

He crosses the boundaries of the unseen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd passes over the edge of mortal sight<\/p>\n

To a new vision of himself and things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is a spirit in an unfinished world<\/p>\n

That knows him not and cannot know itself:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe surface symbol of his goalless quest<\/p>\n

Takes deeper meanings to his inner view;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis is a search of darkness for the light,<\/p>\n

Of mortal life for immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the vessel of an earthly embodiment<\/p>\n

Over the narrow rails of limiting sense<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe looks out on the magic waves of Time<\/p>\n

Where mind like a moon illumines the world’s dark.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is limned ever retreating from the eyes,<\/p>\n

As if in a tenuous misty dream-light drawn,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe outline of a dim mysterious shore.<\/p>\n

A sailor on the Inconscient’s fathomless sea,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe voyages through a starry world of thought<\/p>\n

On Matter’s deck to a spiritual sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the noise and multitudinous cry,<\/p>\n

Across the rapt unknowable silences,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough a strange mid-world under supernal skies,<\/p>\n

Beyond earth’s longitudes and latitudes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis goal is fixed outside all present maps.<\/p>\n

But none learns whither through the unknown he sails<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr what secret mission the great Mother gave.<\/p>\n

In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDriven by her breath across life’s tossing deep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Through the thunder’s roar and through the windless hush,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough fog and mist where nothing more is seen,<\/p>\n

He carries her sealed orders in his breast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLate will he know, opening the mystic script,<\/p>\n

Whether to a blank port in the Unseen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover<\/p>\n

A new mind and body in the city of God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house<\/p>\n

And make the finite one with Infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the salt waste of the endless years<\/p>\n

Her ocean winds impel his errant boat,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe cosmic waters plashing as he goes,<\/p>\n

A rumour around him and danger and a call.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlways he follows in her force’s wake.<\/p>\n

He sails through life and death and other life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe travels on through waking and through sleep.<\/p>\n

A power is on him from her occult force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat ties him to his own creation’s fate,<\/p>\n

And never can the mighty Traveller rest<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd never can the mystic voyage cease<\/p>\n

Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the morns of God have overtaken his night.<\/p>\n

As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor this is sure that he and she are one;<\/p>\n

Even when he sleeps, he keeps her on his breast:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhoever leaves her, he will not depart<\/p>\n

To repose without her in the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a truth to know, a work to do;<\/p>\n

Her play is real; a Mystery he fulfils:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a plan in the Mother’s deep world-whim,<\/p>\n

A purpose in her vast and random game.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis ever she meant since the first dawn of life,<\/p>\n

This constant will she covered with her sport,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,<\/p>\n

With the Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWake a dumb self in the inconscient depths<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>72<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And raise a lost Power from its python sleep<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time<\/p>\n

And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor this he left his white infinity<\/p>\n

And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat Godhead’s seed might flower in mindless Space.<\/p>\n

END OF<\/font> CANTO<\/font> FOUR<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 7<\/font>3<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Canto Four   The Secret Knowledge   ON A height he stood that looked towards greater heights. Our early approaches to the Infinite Are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-33-34-savitri","wpcat-50-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}