{"id":2455,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2455"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:44","slug":"10-canto-five-the-godheads-of-the-little-life-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/10-canto-five-the-godheads-of-the-little-life-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-10_Canto Five – The Godheads of the Little Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Godheads of the Little Life<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA <\/font>FIXED<\/b> and narrow power with rigid forms,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe saw the empire of the little life,<\/p>\n

An unhappy corner in eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt lived upon the margin of the Idea<\/p>\n

Protected by Ignorance as in a shell.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen, hoping to learn the secret of this world<\/p>\n

He peered across its scanty fringe of sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo disengage from its surface-clear obscurity<\/p>\n

The Force that moved it and the Idea that made,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImposing smallness on the Infinite,<\/p>\n

The ruling spirit of its littleness,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe divine law that gave it right to be,<\/p>\n

Its claim on Nature and its need in Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe plunged his gaze into the siege of mist<\/p>\n

That held this ill-lit straitened continent<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRinged with the skies and seas of ignorance<\/p>\n

And kept it safe from Truth and Self and Light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs when a searchlight stabs the Night’s blind breast<\/p>\n

And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,<\/p>\n

All lurking things were torn out of their veils<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd held up in his vision’s sun-white blaze.<\/p>\n

A busy restless uncouth populace<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTeemed in their dusky unnoted thousands there.<\/p>\n

In a mist of secrecy wrapping the world-scene<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe little deities of Time’s nether act<\/p>\n

Who work remote from Heaven’s controlling eye,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPlotted, unknown to the creatures whom they move,<\/p>\n

The small conspiracies of this petty reign<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmused with the small contrivings, the brief hopes<\/p>\n

And little eager steps and little ways<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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And reptile wallowings in the dark and dust,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the crouch and ignominy of creeping life.<\/p>\n

A trepidant and motley multitude,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA strange pell-mell of magic artisans,<\/p>\n

Was seen moulding the plastic clay of life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn elfin brood, an elemental kind.<\/p>\n

Astonished by the unaccustomed glow,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if immanent in the shadows started up<\/p>\n

Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small,<\/p>\n

And genii fairer but unsouled and poor<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost,<\/p>\n

And errant divinities trapped in Time’s dust.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIgnorant and dangerous wills but armed with power,<\/p>\n

Half-animal, half-god their mood, their shape.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the greyness of a dim background<\/p>\n

Their whispers come, an inarticulate force,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwake in mind an echoing thought or word,<\/p>\n

To their sting of impulse the heart’s sanction draw,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd in that little Nature do their work<\/p>\n

And fill its powers and creatures with unease.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts seed of joy they curse with sorrow’s fruit,<\/p>\n

Put out with error’s breath its scanty lights<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd turn its surface truths to falsehood’s ends,<\/p>\n

Its small emotions spur, its passions drive<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo the abyss or through the bog and mire:<\/p>\n

Or else with a goad of hard dry lusts they prick,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhile jogs on devious ways that nowhere lead<\/p>\n

Life’s cart finding no issue from ignorance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo sport with good and evil is their law;<\/p>\n

Luring to failure and meaningless success,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll models they corrupt, all measures cheat,<\/p>\n

Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd lead the endless cycles of desire<\/p>\n

Through semblances of sad or happy chance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo an inescapable fatality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

All by their influence is enacted there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor there alone is their empire or their role:<\/p>\n

Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd in a small body self is all that counts,<\/p>\n

Wherever love and light and largeness lack,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese crooked fashioners take up their task.<\/p>\n

To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHere too these godlings drive our human hearts,<\/p>\n

Our nature’s twilight is their lurking-place:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHere too the darkened primitive heart obeys<\/p>\n

The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat dogs our knowledge with misleading light<\/p>\n

And stands between us and the Truth that saves.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt speaks to us with the voices of the Night:<\/p>\n

Our darkened lives to greater darkness move;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur seekings listen to calamitous hopes.<\/p>\n

A structure of unseeing thoughts is built<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd reason used by an irrational Force.<\/p>\n

This earth is not alone our teacher and nurse;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe powers of all the worlds have entrance here.<\/p>\n

In their own fields they follow the wheel of law<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd cherish the safety of a settled type;<\/p>\n

On earth out of their changeless orbit thrown<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir law is kept, lost their fixed form of things.<\/p>\n

Into a creative chaos they are cast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere all asks order but is driven by Chance;<\/p>\n

Strangers to earth-nature, they must learn earth’s ways,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAliens or opposites, they must unite:<\/p>\n

They work and battle and with pain agree:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese join, those part, all parts and joins anew,<\/p>\n

But never can we know and truly live<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTill all have found their divine harmony.<\/p>\n

Our life’s uncertain way winds circling on,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur mind’s unquiet search asks always light,<\/p>\n

Till they have learned their secret in their source,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the light of the Timeless and its spaceless home,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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In the joy of the Eternal sole and one.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut now the Light supreme is far away:<\/p>\n

Our conscious life obeys the Inconscient’s laws;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo ignorant purposes and blind desires<\/p>\n

Our hearts are moved by an ambiguous force;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven our mind’s conquests wear a battered crown.<\/p>\n

A slowly changing order binds our will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is our doom until our souls are free.<\/p>\n

A mighty Hand then rolls mind’s firmaments back,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfinity takes up the finite’s acts<\/p>\n

And Nature steps into the eternal Light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen only ends this dream of nether life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt the outset of this enigmatic world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich seems at once an enormous brute machine<\/p>\n

And a slow unmasking of the spirit in things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this revolving chamber without walls<\/p>\n

In which God sits impassive everywhere<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if unknown to himself and by us unseen<\/p>\n

In a miracle of inconscient secrecy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet is all here his action and his will.<\/p>\n

In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,<\/p>\n

A body sleeping without sense or soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mass phenomenon of visible shapes<\/p>\n

Supported by the silence of the Void<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAppeared in the eternal Consciousness<\/p>\n

And seemed an outward and insensible world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was none there to see and none to feel;<\/p>\n

Only the miraculous Inconscient,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA subtle wizard skilled, was at its task.<\/p>\n

Inventing ways for magical results,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tManaging creation’s marvellous device,<\/p>\n

Marking mechanically dumb wisdom’s points,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUsing the unthought inevitable Idea,<\/p>\n

It did the works of God’s intelligence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Or wrought the will of some supreme Unknown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill consciousness was hidden in Nature’s womb,<\/p>\n

Unfelt was the Bliss whose rapture dreamed the worlds.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBeing was an inert substance driven by Force.<\/p>\n

At first was only an etheric Space:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts huge vibrations circled round and round<\/p>\n

Housing some unconceived initiative:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUpheld by a supreme original Breath<\/p>\n

Expansion and contraction’s mystic act<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreated touch and friction in the void,<\/p>\n

Into abstract emptiness brought clash and clasp:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tParent of an expanding universe<\/p>\n

In a matrix of disintegrating force,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy spending it conserved an endless sum.<\/p>\n

On the hearth of Space it kindled a viewless Fire<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat, scattering worlds as one might scatter seeds,<\/p>\n

Whirled out the luminous order of the stars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn ocean of electric Energy<\/p>\n

Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConstructing by their dance this solid scheme,<\/p>\n

Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMasses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;<\/p>\n

Light flung the photon’s swift revealing spark<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd showed, in the minuteness of its flash<\/p>\n

Imaged, this cosmos of apparent things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus has been made this real impossible world,<\/p>\n

An obvious miracle or convincing show.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr so it seems to man’s audacious mind<\/p>\n

Who seats his thought as the arbiter of truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis personal vision as impersonal fact,<\/p>\n

As witnesses of an objective world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis erring sense and his instruments’ artifice.<\/p>\n

Thus must he work life’s tangible riddle out<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a doubtful light, by error seize on Truth<\/p>\n

And slowly part the visage and the veil.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr else, forlorn of faith in mind and sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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His knowledge a bright body of ignorance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe sees in all things strangely fashioned here<\/p>\n

The unwelcome jest of a deceiving Force,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA parable of Maya and her might.<\/p>\n

This vast perpetual motion caught and held<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the mysterious and unchanging change<\/p>\n

Of the persistent movement we call Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd ever renewing its recurrent beat,<\/p>\n

These mobile rounds that stereotype a flux,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese static objects in the cosmic dance<\/p>\n

That are but Energy’s self-repeating whorls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tProlonged by the spirit of the brooding Void,<\/p>\n

Awaited life and sense and waking Mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA little the Dreamer changed his pose of stone.<\/p>\n

But when the Inconscient’s scrupulous work was done<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Chance coerced by fixed immutable laws,<\/p>\n

A scene was set for Nature’s conscious play.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen stirred the Spirit’s mute immobile sleep;<\/p>\n

The Force concealed broke dumbly, slowly out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA dream of living woke in Matter’s heart,<\/p>\n

A will to live moved the Inconscient’s dust,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA freak of living startled vacant Time,<\/p>\n

Ephemeral in a blank eternity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfinitesimal in a dead Infinite.<\/p>\n

A subtler breath quickened dead Matter’s forms;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe world’s set rhythm changed to a conscious cry;<\/p>\n

A serpent Power twinned the insensible Force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIslands of living dotted lifeless Space<\/p>\n

And germs of living formed in formless air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Life was born that followed Matter’s law,<\/p>\n

Ignorant of the motives of its steps;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEver inconstant, yet for ever the same,<\/p>\n

It repeated the paradox that gave it birth:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts restless and unstable stabilities<\/p>\n

Recurred incessantly in the flow of Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd purposeful movements in unthinking forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Betrayed the heavings of an imprisoned Will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWaking and sleep lay locked in mutual arms;<\/p>\n

Helpless and indistinct came pleasure and pain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTrembling with the first faint thrills of a World-Soul.<\/p>\n

A strength of life that could not cry or move,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet broke into beauty signing some deep delight:<\/p>\n

An inarticulate sensibility,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrobs of the heart of an unknowing world,<\/p>\n

Ran through its somnolent torpor and there stirred<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vague uncertain thrill, a wandering beat,<\/p>\n

A dim unclosing as of secret eyes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfant self-feeling grew and birth was born.<\/p>\n

A godhead woke but lay with dreaming limbs;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer house refused to open its sealed doors.<\/p>\n

Insentient to our eyes that only see<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe form, the act and not the imprisoned God,<\/p>\n

Life hid in her pulse occult of growth and power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA consciousness with mute stifled beats of sense,<\/p>\n

A mind suppressed that knew not yet of thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn inert spirit that could only be.<\/p>\n

At first she raised no voice, no motion dared:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCharged with world-power, instinct with living force,<\/p>\n

Only she clung with her roots to the safe earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrilled dumbly to the shocks of ray and breeze<\/p>\n

And put out tendril fingers of desire;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe strength in her yearning for sun and light<\/p>\n

Felt not the embrace that made her breathe and live;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbsorbed she dreamed content with beauty and hue.<\/p>\n

At last the charmed Immensity looked forth:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAstir, vibrant, hungering, she groped for mind;<\/p>\n

Then slowly sense quivered and thought peered out;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe forced the reluctant mould to grow aware.<\/p>\n

The magic was chiselled of a conscious form;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts tranced vibrations rhythmed a quick response,<\/p>\n

And luminous stirrings prompted brain and nerve,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwoke in Matter spirit’s identity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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And in a body lit the miracle<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf the heart’s love and the soul’s witness gaze.<\/p>\n

Impelled by an unseen Will there could break out<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFragments of some vast impulse to become<\/p>\n

And vivid glimpses of a secret self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the doubtful seeds and force of shapes to be<\/p>\n

Awoke from the inconscient swoon of things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn animal creation crept and ran<\/p>\n

And flew and called between the earth and sky,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHunted by death but hoping still to live<\/p>\n

And glad to breathe if only for a while.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen man was moulded from the original brute.<\/p>\n

A thinking mind had come to lift life’s moods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe keen-edged tool of a Nature mixed and vague,<\/p>\n

An intelligence half-witness, half-machine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis seeming driver of her wheel of works<\/p>\n

Missioned to motive and record her drift<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd fix its law on her inconstant powers,<\/p>\n

This master-spring of a delicate enginery,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAspired to enlighten its user and refine<\/p>\n

Lifting to a vision of the indwelling Power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe absorbed mechanic’s crude initiative:<\/p>\n

He raised his eyes; Heaven-light mirrored a Face.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmazed at the works wrought in her mystic sleep,<\/p>\n

She looked upon the world that she had made:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWondering now seized the great automaton;<\/p>\n

She paused to understand her self and aim,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPondering she learned to act by conscious rule,<\/p>\n

A visioned measure guided her rhythmic steps;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThought bordered her instincts with a frame of will<\/p>\n

And lit with the idea her blinded urge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn her mass of impulses, her reflex acts,<\/p>\n

On the Inconscient’s pushed or guided drift<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd mystery of unthinking accurate steps<\/p>\n

She stuck the specious image of a self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA living idol of disfigured spirit;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tOn Matter’s acts she imposed a patterned law;<\/p>\n

She made a thinking body from chemic cells<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd moulded a being out of a driven force.<\/p>\n

To be what she was not inflamed her hope:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe turned her dream towards some high Unknown;<\/p>\n

A breath was felt below of One supreme.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn opening looked up to spheres above<\/p>\n

And coloured shadows limned on mortal ground<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe passing figures of immortal things;<\/p>\n

A quick celestial flash could sometimes come:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe illumined soul-ray fell on heart and flesh<\/p>\n

And touched with semblances of ideal light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe stuff of which our earthly dreams are made.<\/p>\n

A fragile human love that could not last,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEgo’s moth-wings to lift the seraph soul,<\/p>\n

Appeared, a surface glamour of brief date<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tExtinguished by a scanty breath of Time;<\/p>\n

Joy that forgot mortality for a while<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCame, a rare visitor who left betimes,<\/p>\n

And made all things seem beautiful for an hour,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHopes that soon fade to drab realities<\/p>\n

And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKindled the common earth with their brief flame.<\/p>\n

A creature insignificant and small<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVisited, uplifted by an unknown Power,<\/p>\n

Man laboured on his little patch of earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor means to last, to enjoy, to suffer and die.<\/p>\n

A spirit that perished not with the body and breath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWas there like a shadow of the Unmanifest<\/p>\n

And stood behind the little personal form<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut claimed not yet this earthly embodiment.<\/p>\n

Assenting to Nature’s long slow-moving toil,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWatching the works of his own Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Unknown, unfelt the mighty Witness lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd nothing shows the Glory that is here.<\/p>\n

A Wisdom governing the mystic world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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A Silence listening to the cry of Life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt sees the hurrying crowd of moments stream<\/p>\n

Towards the still greatness of a distant hour.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis huge world unintelligibly turns<\/p>\n

In the shadow of a mused Inconscience;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt hides a key to inner meanings missed,<\/p>\n

It locks in our hearts a voice we cannot hear.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn enigmatic labour of the spirit,<\/p>\n

An exact machine of which none knows the use,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn art and ingenuity without sense,<\/p>\n

This minute elaborate orchestrated life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor ever plays its motiveless symphonies.<\/p>\n

The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt studies surface laws by surface thought,<\/p>\n

Life’s steps surveys and Nature’s process sees,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNot seeing for what she acts or why we live;<\/p>\n

It marks her tireless care of just device,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer patient intricacy of fine detail,<\/p>\n

The ingenious spirit’s brave inventive plan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her great futile mass of endless works,<\/p>\n

Adds purposeful figures to her purposeless sum,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts gabled storeys piles, its climbing roofs<\/p>\n

On the close-carved foundations she has laid,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImagined citadels reared in mythic air<\/p>\n

Or mounts a stair of dream to a mystic moon:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTransient creations point and hit the sky:<\/p>\n

A world-conjecture’s scheme is laboured out<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn the dim floor of mind’s incertitude,<\/p>\n

Or painfully built a fragmentary whole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImpenetrable, a mystery recondite<\/p>\n

Is the vast plan of which we are a part;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts harmonies are discords to our view<\/p>\n

Because we know not the great theme they serve.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInscrutable work the cosmic agencies.<\/p>\n

Only the fringe of a wide surge we see;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Our instruments have not that greater light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur will tunes not with the eternal Will,<\/p>\n

Our heart’s sight is too blind and passionate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImpotent to share in Nature’s mystic tact,<\/p>\n

Inapt to feel the pulse and core of things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur reason cannot sound life’s mighty sea<\/p>\n

And only counts its waves and scans its foam;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt knows not whence these motions touch and pass,<\/p>\n

It sees not whither sweeps the hurrying flood:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly it strives to canalise its powers<\/p>\n

And hopes to turn its course to human ends:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut all its means come from the Inconscient’s store.<\/p>\n

Unseen here act dim huge world-energies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd only trickles and currents are our share.<\/p>\n

Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCatching at little fragments of the Truth<\/p>\n

In a small corner of infinity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur lives are inlets of an ocean’s force.<\/p>\n

Our conscious movements have sealed origins<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut with those shadowy seats no converse hold;<\/p>\n

No understanding binds our comrade parts;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur acts emerge from a crypt our minds ignore.<\/p>\n

Our deepest depths are ignorant of themselves;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven our body is a mystery shop;<\/p>\n

As our earth’s roots lurk screened below our earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo lie unseen our roots of mind and life.<\/p>\n

Our springs are kept close hid beneath, within;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur souls are moved by powers behind the wall.<\/p>\n

In the subterranean reaches of the spirit<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA puissance acts and recks not what it means;<\/p>\n

Using unthinking monitors and scribes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is the cause of what we think and feel.<\/p>\n

The troglodytes of the subconscious Mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIll-trained slow stammering interpreters<\/p>\n

Only of their small task’s routine aware<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd busy with the record in our cells,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Concealed in the subliminal secrecies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMid an obscure occult machinery,<\/p>\n

Capture the mystic Morse whose measured lilt<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTransmits the messages of the cosmic Force.<\/p>\n

A whisper falls into life’s inner ear<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd echoes from the dun subconscient caves,<\/p>\n

Speech leaps, thought quivers, the heart vibrates, the will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnswers and tissue and nerve obey the call.<\/p>\n

Our lives translate these subtle intimacies;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll is the commerce of a secret Power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA thinking puppet is the mind of life:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts choice is the work of elemental strengths<\/p>\n

That know not their own birth and end and cause<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd glimpse not the immense intent they serve.<\/p>\n

In this nether life of man drab-hued and dull,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet filled with poignant small ignoble things,<\/p>\n

The conscious Doll is pushed a hundred ways<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd feels the push but not the hands that drive.<\/p>\n

For none can see the masked ironic troupe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo whom our figure-selves are marionettes,<\/p>\n

Our deeds unwitting movements in their grasp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur passionate strife an entertainment’s scene.<\/p>\n

Ignorant themselves of their own fount of strength<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey play their part in the enormous whole.<\/p>\n

Agents of darkness imitating light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSpirits obscure and moving things obscure,<\/p>\n

Unwillingly they serve a mightier Power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnanke’s engines organising Chance,<\/p>\n

Channels perverse of a stupendous Will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTools of the Unknown who use us as their tools,<\/p>\n

Invested with power in Nature’s nether state,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto the actions mortals think their own<\/p>\n

They bring the incoherencies of Fate,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr make a doom of Time’s slipshod caprice<\/p>\n

And toss the lives of men from hand to hand<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn an inconsequent and devious game.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Against all higher truth their stuff rebels;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly to Titan force their will lies prone.<\/p>\n

Inordinate their hold on human hearts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn all our nature’s turns they intervene.<\/p>\n

Insignificant architects of low-built lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd engineers of interest and desire,<\/p>\n

Out of crude earthiness and muddy thrills<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd coarse reactions of material nerve<\/p>\n

They build our huddled structures of self-will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the ill-lighted mansions of our thought,<\/p>\n

Or with the ego’s factories and marts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurround the beautiful temple of the soul.<\/p>\n

Artists minute of the hues of littleness,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey set the mosaic of our comedy<\/p>\n

Or plan the trivial tragedy of our days,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArrange the deed, combine the circumstance<\/p>\n

And the fantasia of the moods costume.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese unwise prompters of man’s ignorant heart<\/p>\n

And tutors of his stumbling speech and will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMovers of petty wraths and lusts and hates<\/p>\n

And changeful thoughts and shallow emotion’s starts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese slight illusion-makers with their masks,<\/p>\n

Painters of the decor of a dull-hued stage<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd nimble scene-shifters of the human play,<\/p>\n

Ever are busy with this ill-lit scene.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOurselves incapable to build our fate<\/p>\n

Only as actors speak and strut our parts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUntil the piece is done and we pass off<\/p>\n

Into a brighter Time and subtler Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus they inflict their little pigmy law<\/p>\n

And curb the mounting slow uprise of man,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen his too scanty walk with death they close.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the ephemeral creature’s daily life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs long as the human animal is lord<\/p>\n

And a dense nether nature screens the soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tServes earthy interest and creature joys,<\/p>\n

An incurable littleness pursues his days.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEver since consciousness was born on earth,<\/p>\n

Life is the same in insect, ape and man,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts stuff unchanged, its way the common route.<\/p>\n

If new designs, if richer details grow<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd thought is added and more tangled cares,<\/p>\n

If little by little it wears a brighter face,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill even in man the plot is mean and poor.<\/p>\n

A gross content prolongs his fallen state;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis small successes are failures of the soul,<\/p>\n

His little pleasures punctuate frequent griefs:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHardship and toil are the heavy price he pays<\/p>\n

For the right to live and his last wages death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn inertia sunk towards inconscience,<\/p>\n

A sleep that imitates death is his repose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA puny splendour of creative force<\/p>\n

Is made his spur to fragile human works<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich yet outlast their brief creator’s breath.<\/p>\n

He dreams sometimes of the revels of the gods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd sees the Dionysian gesture pass, \u2014<\/p>\n

A leonine greatness that would tear his soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf through his failing limbs and fainting heart<\/p>\n

The sweet and joyful mighty madness swept:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTrivial amusements stimulate and waste<\/p>\n

The energy given to him to grow and be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis little hour is spent in little things.<\/p>\n

A brief companionship with many jars,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA little love and jealousy and hate,<\/p>\n

A touch of friendship mid indifferent crowds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDraw his heart-plan on life’s diminutive map.<\/p>\n

If something great awakes, too frail his pitch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo reveal its zenith tension of delight,<\/p>\n

His thought to eternise its ephemeral soar,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArt’s brilliant gleam is a pastime for his eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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A thrill that smites the nerves is music’s spell.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmidst his harassed toil and welter of cares,<\/p>\n

Pressed by the labour of his crowding thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe draws sometimes around his aching brow<\/p>\n

Nature’s calm mighty hands to heal his life-pain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is saved by her silence from his rack of self;<\/p>\n

In her tranquil beauty is his purest bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA new life dawns, he looks out from vistas wide;<\/p>\n

The Spirit’s breath moves him but soon retires:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis strength was not made to hold that puissant guest.<\/p>\n

All dulls down to convention and routine<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr a fierce excitement brings him vivid joys:<\/p>\n

His days are tinged with the red hue of strife<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd lust’s hot glare and passion’s crimson stain;<\/p>\n

Battle and murder are his tribal game.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTime has he none to turn his eyes within<\/p>\n

And look for his lost self and his dead soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis motion on too short an axis wheels;<\/p>\n

He cannot soar but creeps on his long road<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr if, impatient of the trudge of Time,<\/p>\n

He would make a splendid haste on Fate’s slow road,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis heart that runs soon pants and tires and sinks;<\/p>\n

Or he walks ever on and finds no end.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHardly a few can climb to greater life.<\/p>\n

All tunes to a low scale and conscious pitch.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;<\/p>\n

His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRare are his visits of heavenly ecstasy.<\/p>\n

The bliss which sleeps in things and tries to wake,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBreaks out in him in a small joy of life:<\/p>\n

This scanty grace is his persistent stay;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt lightens the burden of his many ills<\/p>\n

And reconciles him to his little world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is satisfied with his common average kind;<\/p>\n

Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis old familiar interests and desires<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDefending his small life from the Invisible;<\/p>\n

His being’s kinship to infinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has shut away from him into inmost self,<\/p>\n

Fenced off the greatnesses of hidden God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis being was formed to play a trivial part<\/p>\n

In a little drama on a petty stage;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a narrow plot he has pitched his tent of life<\/p>\n

Beneath the wide gaze of the starry Vast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is the crown of all that has been done:<\/p>\n

Thus is creation’s labour justified;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the world’s result, Nature’s last poise!<\/p>\n

And if this were all and nothing more were meant,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf what now seems were the whole of what must be,<\/p>\n

If this were not a stade through which we pass<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn our road from Matter to eternal Self,<\/p>\n

To the Light that made the worlds, the Cause of things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWell might interpret our mind’s limited view<\/p>\n

Existence as an accident in Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIllusion or phenomenon or freak,<\/p>\n

The paradox of a creative Thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich moves between unreal opposites,<\/p>\n

Inanimate Force struggling to feel and know,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMatter that chanced to read itself by Mind,<\/p>\n

Inconscience monstrously engendering soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt times all looks unreal and remote:<\/p>\n

We seem to live in a fiction of our thoughts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPieced from sensation’s fanciful traveller’s tale,<\/p>\n

Or caught on the film of the recording brain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA figment or circumstance in cosmic sleep.<\/p>\n

A somnambulist walking under the moon,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn image of ego treads through an ignorant dream<\/p>\n

Counting the moments of a spectral Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a false perspective of effect and cause,<\/p>\n

Trusting to a specious prospect of world-space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt drifts incessantly from scene to scene,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Whither it knows not, to what fabulous verge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll here is dreamed or doubtfully exists,<\/p>\n

But who the dreamer is and whence he looks<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIs still unknown or only a shadowy guess.<\/p>\n

Or the world is real but ourselves too small,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInsufficient for the mightiness of our stage.<\/p>\n

A thin life-curve crosses the titan whirl<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf the orbit of a soulless universe,<\/p>\n

And in the belly of the sparse rolling mass<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mind looks out from a small casual globe<\/p>\n

And wonders what itself and all things are.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd yet to some interned subjective sight<\/p>\n

That strangely has formed in Matter’s sightless stuff,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA pointillage minute of little self<\/p>\n

Takes figure as world-being’s conscious base.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSuch is our scene in the half-light below.<\/p>\n

This is the sign of Matter’s infinite,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis the weird purport of the picture shown<\/p>\n

To Science the giantess, measurer of her field,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs she pores on the record of her close survey<\/p>\n

And mathematises her huge external world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo Reason bound within the circle of sense,<\/p>\n

Or in Thought’s broad impalpable Exchange<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA speculator in tenuous vast ideas,<\/p>\n

Abstractions in the void her currency<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe know not with what firm values for its base.<\/p>\n

Only religion in this bankruptcy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPresents its dubious riches to our hearts<\/p>\n

Or signs unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur poverty shall there have its revenge.<\/p>\n

Our spirits depart discarding a futile life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto the blank unknown or with them take<\/p>\n

Death’s passport into immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet was this only a provisional scheme,<\/p>\n

A false appearance sketched by limiting sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Mind’s insufficient self-discovery,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn early attempt, a first experiment.<\/p>\n

This was a toy to amuse the infant earth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut knowledge ends not in these surface powers<\/p>\n

That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd dare not look into the dangerous depths<\/p>\n

Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a deeper seeing from within<\/p>\n

And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA greater vision meets us on the heights<\/p>\n

In the luminous wideness of the spirit’s gaze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt last there wakes in us a witness Soul<\/p>\n

That looks at truths unseen and scans the Unknown;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen all assumes a new and marvellous face:<\/p>\n

The world quivers with a God-light at its core,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Time’s deep heart high purposes move and live,<\/p>\n

Life’s borders crumble and join infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis broad, confused, yet rigid scheme becomes<\/p>\n

A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA game, a work ambiguously divine.<\/p>\n

Our seekings are short-lived experiments<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMade by a wordless and inscrutable Power<\/p>\n

Testing its issues from inconscient Night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo meet its luminous self of Truth and Bliss.<\/p>\n

It peers at the Real through the apparent form;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt labours in our mortal mind and sense;<\/p>\n

Amid the figures of the Ignorance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,<\/p>\n

It seeks the truth to which all figures point;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt looks for the source of Light with vision’s lamp;<\/p>\n

It works to find the Doer of all works,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unfelt Self within who is the guide,<\/p>\n

The unknown Self above who is the goal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll is not here a blinded Nature’s task:<\/p>\n

A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Witness sanctioning her will and works,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tAn Eye unseen in the unseeing vast;<\/p>\n

There is an Influence from a Light above,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere are thoughts remote and sealed eternities;<\/p>\n

A mystic motive drives the stars and suns.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this passage from a deaf unknowing Force<\/p>\n

To struggling consciousness and transient breath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mighty Supernature waits on Time.<\/p>\n

The world is other than we now think and see,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed;<\/p>\n

Our minds are starters in the race to God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur souls deputed selves of the Supreme.<\/p>\n

Across the cosmic field through narrow lanes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAsking a scanty dole from Fortune’s hands<\/p>\n

And garbed in beggar’s robes there walks the One.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven in the theatre of these small lives<\/p>\n

Behind the act a secret sweetness breathes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn urge of miniature divinity.<\/p>\n

A mystic passion from the wells of God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFlows through the guarded spaces of the soul;<\/p>\n

A force that helps supports the suffering earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn unseen nearness and a hidden joy.<\/p>\n

There are muffled throbs of laughter’s undertones,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe murmur of an occult happiness,<\/p>\n

An exultation in the depths of sleep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA heart of bliss within a world of pain.<\/p>\n

An Infant nursed on Nature’s covert breast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn Infant playing in the magic woods,<\/p>\n

Fluting to rapture by the spirit’s streams,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwaits the hour when we shall turn to his call.<\/p>\n

In this investiture of fleshly life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA soul that is a spark of God survives<\/p>\n

And sometimes it breaks through the sordid screen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd kindles a fire that makes us half-divine.<\/p>\n

In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat sees the unseen and plans eternity,<\/p>\n

Our smallest parts have room for deepest needs;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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There too the golden Messengers can come:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA door is cut in the mud wall of self;<\/p>\n

Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAngels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,<\/p>\n

And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe makers of the image of deity live.<\/p>\n

Pity is there and fire-winged sacrifice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd flashes of sympathy and tenderness<\/p>\n

Cast heaven-lights from the heart’s secluded shrine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA work is done in the deep silences;<\/p>\n

A glory and wonder of spiritual sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA laughter in beauty’s everlasting space<\/p>\n

Transforming world-experience into joy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInhabit the mystery of the untouched gulfs;<\/p>\n

Lulled by Time’s beats eternity sleeps in us.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the sealed hermetic heart, the happy core,<\/p>\n

Unmoved behind this outer shape of death<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe eternal Entity prepares within<\/p>\n

Its matter of divine felicity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts reign of heavenly phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA foresight comes of some immense release,<\/p>\n

Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach part in us desires its absolute.<\/p>\n

Our thoughts covet the everlasting Light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur strength derives from an omnipotent Force,<\/p>\n

And since from a veiled God-joy the worlds were made<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd since eternal Beauty asks for form<\/p>\n

Even here where all is made of being’s dust,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur hearts are captured by ensnaring shapes,<\/p>\n

Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur error crucifies Reality<\/p>\n

To force its birth and divine body here,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCompelling, incarnate in a human form<\/p>\n

And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Its saviour light the inconscient universe.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd when that greater Self comes sea-like down<\/p>\n

To fill this image of our transience,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll shall be captured by delight, transformed:<\/p>\n

In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur mind and life and sense and laugh in a light<\/p>\n

Other than this hard limited human day,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,<\/p>\n

Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis little being of Time, this shadow soul,<\/p>\n

This living dwarf-figurehead of darkened spirit<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of its traffic in petty dreams shall rise.<\/p>\n

Its shape of person and its ego-face<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDivested of this mortal travesty,<\/p>\n

Like a clay troll kneaded into a god<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNew-made in the image of the eternal Guest,<\/p>\n

It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd, flaming with the paradisal touch<\/p>\n

In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the red passion of its infinite change,<\/p>\n

Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if reversing a deformation’s spell,<\/p>\n

Released from the black magic of the Night,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRenouncing servitude to the dim Abyss,<\/p>\n

It shall learn at last who lived within unseen,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd seized with marvel in the adoring heart<\/p>\n

To the enthroned Child-Godhead kneel aware,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTrembling with beauty and delight and love.<\/p>\n

But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the chasm from which our nature rose.<\/p>\n

The soul must soar sovereign above the form<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;<\/p>\n

Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurprise the animal with the occult god.<\/p>\n

Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalling the powers of a bright hemisphere,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>171<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMake the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,<\/p>\n

Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdventuring once more in the natal mist<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the dangerous haze, the pregnant stir,<\/p>\n

He through the astral chaos shore a way<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMid the grey faces of its demon gods,<\/p>\n

Questioned by whispers of its flickering ghosts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBesieged by sorceries of its fluent force.<\/p>\n

As one who walks unguided through strange fields<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTending he knows not where nor with what hope,<\/p>\n

He trod a soil that failed beneath his feet<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd journeyed in stone strength to a fugitive end.<\/p>\n

His trail behind him was a vanishing line<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf glimmering points in a vague immensity;<\/p>\n

A bodiless murmur travelled at his side<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the wounded gloom complaining against light.<\/p>\n

A huge obstruction its immobile heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe watching opacity multiplied as he moved<\/p>\n

Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe darkness glimmered like a dying torch.<\/p>\n

Around him an extinguished phantom glow<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPeopled with shadowy and misleading shapes<\/p>\n

The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

END OF<\/font> CANTO<\/font>
\nFIVE<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>172<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Canto Five   The Godheads of the Little Life   A FIXED and narrow power with rigid forms, He saw the empire of the…<\/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-2455","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\/2455","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=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}