{"id":505,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=505"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:26","slug":"12-book-2-canto-06-the-kingdoms-and-godheads-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/28-savitri-volume-28\/12-book-2-canto-06-the-kingdoms-and-godheads-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","title":{"rendered":"-12_Book 2 Canto 06 The Kingdoms and Godheads.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n
\n

\nCanto Six<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Kingdoms and
\nGodheads of the Greater Life<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As one who between dim receding walls<\/p>\n

Towards the far gleam of a tunnel’s mouth,<\/p>\n

Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace<\/p>\n

And feels approach a breath of wider air,<\/p>\n

So he escaped from that grey anarchy.<\/p>\n

Into an ineffectual world he came,<\/p>\n

A purposeless region of arrested birth<\/p>\n

Where being from non-being fled and dared<\/p>\n

To live but had no strength long to abide.<\/p>\n

Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky<\/p>\n

Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze<\/p>\n

Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds<\/p>\n

And crying for a direction in the void<\/p>\n

Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost<\/p>\n

And wandering through unfamiliar worlds;<\/p>\n

Wings of vague questioning met the query of Space.<\/p>\n

After denial dawned a dubious hope,<\/p>\n

A hope of self and form and leave to live<\/p>\n

And the birth of that which never yet could be,<\/p>\n

And joy of the mind’s hazard, the heart’s choice,<\/p>\n

Grace of the unknown and hands of sudden surprise<\/p>\n

And a touch of sure delight in unsure things:<\/p>\n

To a strange uncertain tract his journey came<\/p>\n

Where consciousness played with unconscious self<\/p>\n

And birth was an attempt or episode.<\/p>\n

A charm drew near that could not keep its spell,<\/p>\n

An eager Power that could not find its way,<\/p>\n

A Chance that chose a strange arithmetic<\/p>\n

But could not bind with it the forms it made,<\/p>\n

A multitude that could not guard its sum<\/p>\n

Which less than zero grew and more than one. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 173<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Arriving at a large and shadowy sense<\/p>\n

That cared not to
\ndefine its fleeting drift<\/p>\n

Life laboured in a strange and mythic air<\/p>\n

Denuded of her sweet magnificent suns.<\/p>\n

In worlds imagined, never yet made true,<\/p>\n

A lingering glimmer on creation’s verge,<\/p>\n

One strayed and dreamed and never stopped to achieve:<\/p>\n

To achieve would have destroyed that magic Space.<\/p>\n

The marvels of a twilight wonderland,<\/p>\n

Full of a beauty strangely, vainly made,<\/p>\n

A surge of fanciful realities,<\/p>\n

Dim tokens of a Splendour sealed above,<\/p>\n

Awoke the passion of the eyes’ desire,<\/p>\n

Compelled belief on the enamoured thought<\/p>\n

And drew the heart but led it to no goal.<\/p>\n

A magic flowed as if of moving scenes<\/p>\n

That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy<\/p>\n

Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art<\/p>\n

In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush<\/p>\n

On a silver background of incertitude.<\/p>\n

An infant glow of heavens near to morn,<\/p>\n

A fire intense conceived but never lit,<\/p>\n

Caressed the air with ardent hints of day.<\/p>\n

The perfect longing for imperfection’s charm,<\/p>\n

The illumined caught by the snare of Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Ethereal creatures drawn by body’s lure<\/p>\n

To that region of promise, beating invisible wings,<\/p>\n

Came hungry for the joy of finite life<\/p>\n

But too divine to tread created soil<\/p>\n

And share the fate of perishable things.<\/p>\n

The Children of the unembodied Gleam<\/p>\n

Arisen from a formless thought in the soul<\/p>\n

And chased by an imperishable desire,<\/p>\n

Traversed the field of the pursuing gaze.<\/p>\n

A will that unpersisting failed, worked there:<\/p>\n

Life was a search but finding never came. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 174<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There nothing satisfied, but all allured,<\/p>\n

Things seemed to be that never wholly are,<\/p>\n

Images were seen that looked like living acts<\/p>\n

And symbols hid the sense they claimed to show,<\/p>\n

Pale dreams grew real to the dreamer’s eyes.<\/p>\n

The souls came there that vainly strive for birth,<\/p>\n

And spirits entrapped might wander through all time,<\/p>\n

Yet never find the truth by which they live.<\/p>\n

All ran like hopes that hunt a lurking chance;<\/p>\n

Nothing was solid, nothing felt complete:<\/p>\n

All was unsafe, miraculous and half-true.<\/p>\n

It seemed a realm of lives that had no base.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then dawned a greater seeking, broadened sky,<\/p>\n

A journey under wings of brooding Force.<\/p>\n

First came the kingdom of the morning star:<\/p>\n

A twilight beauty trembled under its spear<\/p>\n

And the throb of promise of a wider Life.<\/p>\n

Then slowly rose a great and doubting sun<\/p>\n

And in its light she made of self a world.<\/p>\n

A spirit was there that sought for its own deep self,<\/p>\n

Yet was content with fragments pushed in front<\/p>\n

And parts of living that belied the
\nWhole<\/p>\n

But, pieced together, might one day be true.<\/p>\n

Yet something seemed to be achieved at last.<\/p>\n

A growing volume of the will to be,<\/p>\n

A text of living and a graph of force,<\/p>\n

A script of acts, a song of conscious forms<\/p>\n

Burdened with meanings fugitive from thought’s grasp<\/p>\n

And crowded with undertones of life’s rhythmic cry,<\/p>\n

Could write itself on the hearts of living things.<\/p>\n

In an outbreak of the might of secret Spirit,<\/p>\n

In Life and Matter’s answer of delight,<\/p>\n

Some face of deathless beauty could be caught<\/p>\n

That gave immortality to a moment’s joy,<\/p>\n

Some word that could incarnate highest Truth <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 175<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Leaped out from a chance tension of the soul,<\/p>\n

Some hue of the Absolute could fall on life,<\/p>\n

Some glory of knowledge and intuitive sight,<\/p>\n

Some passion of the rapturous heart of Love.<\/p>\n

A hierophant of the bodiless Secrecy<\/p>\n

Interned in an unseen spiritual sheath,<\/p>\n

The Will that pushes sense beyond its scope<\/p>\n

To feel the light and joy intangible,<\/p>\n

Half found its way into the Ineffable’s peace,<\/p>\n

Half captured a sealed sweetness of desire<\/p>\n

That yearned from a bosom of mysterious Bliss,<\/p>\n

Half manifested veiled Reality.<\/p>\n

A soul not wrapped into its cloak of mind<\/p>\n

Could glimpse the true sense of a world of forms;<\/p>\n

Illumined by a vision in the thought,<\/p>\n

Upbuoyed by the heart’s understanding flame,<\/p>\n

It could hold in the conscious ether of the spirit<\/p>\n

The divinity of a symbol universe.<\/p>\n

This realm inspires us with our vaster hopes;<\/p>\n

Its forces have made landings on our globe,<\/p>\n

Its signs have
\nstamped their patterns on our lives:<\/p>\n

It lends a sovereign movement to our fate,<\/p>\n

Its errant waves motive our life’s high surge.<\/p>\n

All that we seek for is prefigured there<\/p>\n

And all we have not known nor even sought<\/p>\n

Which yet one day must be born in human hearts<\/p>\n

That the Timeless may fulfil itself in things.<\/p>\n

Incarnate in the mystery of the days,<\/p>\n

Eternal in an unclosed Infinite,<\/p>\n

A mounting endless possibility<\/p>\n

Climbs high upon a topless ladder of dream<\/p>\n

Forever in the Being’s conscious trance.<\/p>\n

All on that ladder mounts to an unseen end.<\/p>\n

An Energy of perpetual transience makes<\/p>\n

The journey from which no return is sure,<\/p>\n

The pilgrimage of Nature to the Unknown. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 176<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

As if in her ascent to her lost source<\/p>\n

She hoped to unroll all that could ever be,<\/p>\n

Her high procession moves from stage to stage,<\/p>\n

A progress leap from sight to greater sight,<\/p>\n

A process march from form to ampler form,<\/p>\n

A caravan of the inexhaustible<\/p>\n

Formations of a boundless Thought and Force.<\/p>\n

Her timeless Power that lay once on the lap<\/p>\n

Of a beginningless and endless Calm,<\/p>\n

Now severed from the Spirit’s immortal bliss,<\/p>\n

Erects the type of all the joys she has lost;<\/p>\n

Compelling transient substance into shape,<\/p>\n

She hopes by the creative act’s release<\/p>\n

To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill,<\/p>\n

To heal awhile the wound of severance,<\/p>\n

Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness<\/p>\n

And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities<\/p>\n

In the uncertain time-field portioned here.<\/p>\n

Almost she nears what never can be attained;<\/p>\n

She shuts eternity into an hour<\/p>\n

And fills a little soul with the Infinite;<\/p>\n

The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;<\/p>\n

She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,<\/p>\n

Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms<\/p>\n

And feels around her infinity’s embrace.<\/p>\n

Her task no ending knows, she serves no aim<\/p>\n

But labours driven by a nameless Will<\/p>\n

That came from some unknowable formless Vast.<\/p>\n

This is her secret and impossible task<\/p>\n

To catch the boundless in a net of birth,<\/p>\n

To cast the spirit into physical form,<\/p>\n

To lend speech and thought to the Ineffable;<\/p>\n

She is pushed to reveal the ever Unmanifest.<\/p>\n

Yet by her skill the impossible has been done:<\/p>\n

She follows her sublime irrational plan,<\/p>\n

Invents devices of her magic art <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 177<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

To find new bodies for the Infinite<\/p>\n

And images of the Unimaginable;<\/p>\n

She has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time.<\/p>\n

Even now herself she knows not what she has done.<\/p>\n

For all is wrought beneath a baffling mask:<\/p>\n

A semblance other than its hidden truth<\/p>\n

The aspect wears of an illusion’s trick,<\/p>\n

A feigned time-driven unreality,<\/p>\n

The unfinished creation of a changing soul<\/p>\n

In a body changing with the inhabitant.<\/p>\n

Insignificant her means, infinite her work;<\/p>\n

On a great field of shapeless consciousness<\/p>\n

In little finite strokes of mind and sense<\/p>\n

An endless truth she endlessly unfolds;<\/p>\n

A timeless mystery works out in Time.<\/p>\n

The greatness she has dreamed her acts have missed,<\/p>\n

Her labour is a passion and a pain,<\/p>\n

A rapture and pang, her glory and her curse;<\/p>\n

And yet she cannot choose but labours on;<\/p>\n

Her mighty heart forbids her to desist.<\/p>\n

As long as the world lasts her failure lives<\/p>\n

Astonishing and foiling Reason’s gaze,<\/p>\n

A folly and a beauty unspeakable,<\/p>\n

A superb madness of the will to live,<\/p>\n

A daring, a delirium of delight.<\/p>\n

This is her being’s law, its sole resource;<\/p>\n

She sates, though satisfaction never comes,<\/p>\n

Her hungry will to lavish everywhere<\/p>\n

Her many-imaged fictions of the Self<\/p>\n

And thousand fashions of one Reality.<\/p>\n

A world she made touched by truth’s fleeing hem,<\/p>\n

A world cast into a dream of what it seeks,<\/p>\n

An icon of truth, a conscious mystery’s shape.<\/p>\n

It lingered not like the earth-mind hemmed in<\/p>\n

In solid barriers of apparent fact;<\/p>\n

It dared to trust the dream-mind and the soul. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 178<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A hunter of spiritual verities<\/p>\n

Still only thought or guessed or held by faith,<\/p>\n

It seized in imagination and confined<\/p>\n

A painted bird of paradise in a cage.<\/p>\n

This greater life is enamoured of the Unseen;<\/p>\n

It calls to some highest Light beyond its reach,<\/p>\n

It can feel the Silence that absolves the soul;<\/p>\n

It feels a saviour touch, a ray divine:<\/p>\n

Beauty and good and truth its godheads are.<\/p>\n

It is near to heavenlier heavens than earth’s eyes see,<\/p>\n

A direr darkness than
\nman’s life can bear.<\/p>\n

It has kinship with the demon and the god.<\/p>\n

A strange enthusiasm has moved its heart;<\/p>\n

It hungers for heights, it passions for the supreme.<\/p>\n

It hunts for the perfect word, the perfect shape,<\/p>\n

It leaps to the summit thought, the summit light.<\/p>\n

For by the form the Formless is brought close<\/p>\n

And all perfection fringes the Absolute.<\/p>\n

A child of heaven who never saw his home,<\/p>\n

Its impetus meets the eternal at a point:<\/p>\n

It can only near and touch, it cannot hold;<\/p>\n

It can only strain towards some bright extreme:<\/p>\n

Its greatness is to seek and to create.<\/p>\n

On every plane, this Greatness must create.<\/p>\n

On earth, in heaven, in hell she is the same;<\/p>\n

Of every fate she takes her mighty part.<\/p>\n

A guardian of the fire that lights the suns,<\/p>\n

She triumphs in her glory and her might:<\/p>\n

Opposed, oppressed she bears God’s urge to be born:<\/p>\n

The spirit survives upon non-being’s ground,<\/p>\n

World-force outlasts world-disillusion’s shock:<\/p>\n

Dumb, she is still the Word, inert the Power.<\/p>\n

Here fallen, a slave of death and ignorance,<\/p>\n

To things deathless she is driven to aspire<\/p>\n

And moved to know even the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

Even nescient, null, her sleep creates a world. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 179<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

When most unseen, most mightily she works;<\/p>\n

Housed in the atom,
\nburied in the clod<\/p>\n

Her quick creative passion cannot cease.<\/p>\n

Inconscience is her long gigantic pause,<\/p>\n

Her cosmic swoon is a stupendous phase:<\/p>\n

Time-born, she hides her immortality;<\/p>\n

In death, her bed, she waits the hour to rise.<\/p>\n

Even with the Light denied that sent her forth<\/p>\n

And the hope dead she needed for her task,<\/p>\n

Even when her brightest stars are quenched in Night,<\/p>\n

Nourished by hardship and calamity<\/p>\n

And with pain for her body’s handmaid, masseuse, nurse,<\/p>\n

Her tortured invisible spirit continues still<\/p>\n

To toil though in darkness, to create though with pangs;<\/p>\n

She carries crucified God upon her breast.<\/p>\n

In chill insentient depths where joy is none,<\/p>\n

Immured, oppressed by the resisting Void<\/p>\n

Where nothing moves and nothing can become,<\/p>\n

Still she remembers, still invokes the skill<\/p>\n

The Wonder-Worker gave her at her birth,<\/p>\n

Imparts to drowsy formlessness a shape,<\/p>\n

Reveals a world where nothing was before.<\/p>\n

In realms confined to a prone circle of death,<\/p>\n

To a dark eternity of Ignorance,<\/p>\n

A quiver in an inert inconscient mass,<\/p>\n

Or imprisoned in immobilised whorls of Force,<\/p>\n

By Matter’s blind compulsion deaf and mute<\/p>\n

She reposes
\nmotionless in its dust of sleep.<\/p>\n

Then, for her rebel waking’s punishment<\/p>\n

Given only hard mechanic Circumstance<\/p>\n

As the enginery of her magic craft,<\/p>\n

She fashions godlike marvels out of mud;<\/p>\n

In the plasm she sets her dumb immortal urge,<\/p>\n

Helps the live tissue to think, the closed sense to feel,<\/p>\n

Flashes through the frail nerves poignant messages,<\/p>\n

In a heart of flesh miraculously loves, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 180<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

To brute bodies gives a soul, a will, a voice.<\/p>\n

Ever she summons as by a sorcerer’s wand<\/p>\n

Beings and shapes and scenes innumerable,<\/p>\n

Torch-bearers of her pomps through Time and Space.<\/p>\n

This world is her long journey through the night,<\/p>\n

The suns and planets lamps to light her road,<\/p>\n

Our reason is the confidante of her thoughts,<\/p>\n

Our senses are her vibrant witnesses.<\/p>\n

There drawing her signs from things half true, half false,<\/p>\n

She labours to replace by realised dreams<\/p>\n

The memory of her lost eternity.<\/p>\n

These are her deeds in this huge world-ignorance:<\/p>\n

Till the veil is lifted, till the night is dead,<\/p>\n

In light or dark she keeps her tireless search;<\/p>\n

Time is her road of endless pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

One mighty passion motives all her works.<\/p>\n

Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;<\/p>\n

For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts<\/p>\n

To move here in a stark unconscious world.<\/p>\n

Its acts are her commerce with her hidden Guest,<\/p>\n

His moods she takes for her heart’s passionate moulds;<\/p>\n

In beauty she treasures the sunlight of his smile.<\/p>\n

Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty,<\/p>\n

She cajoles with her small gifts his mightiness,<\/p>\n

Holds with her scenes his look’s fidelity<\/p>\n

And woos his large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell<\/p>\n

In figures of her million-impulsed Force.<\/p>\n

Only to attract her veiled companion<\/p>\n

And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak<\/p>\n

Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,<\/p>\n

Is her heart’s business and her clinging care.<\/p>\n

Yet when he is most near, she feels him far.<\/p>\n

For contradiction is her nature’s law.<\/p>\n

Although she is ever in him and he in her,<\/p>\n

As if unaware of the eternal tie,<\/p>\n

Her will is to shut God into her works <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 181<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And keep him as her cherished prisoner<\/p>\n

That never they may part again in Time.<\/p>\n

A sumptuous chamber of the
\nSpirit’s sleep<\/p>\n

At first she made, a deep interior room,<\/p>\n

Where he slumbers as if a forgotten guest.<\/p>\n

But now she turns to break the oblivious spell,<\/p>\n

Awakes the sleeper on the sculptured couch;<\/p>\n

She finds again the Presence in the form<\/p>\n

And in the light that wakes with him recovers<\/p>\n

A meaning in the hurry and trudge of Time,<\/p>\n

And through this mind that once obscured the soul<\/p>\n

Passes a glint of unseen deity.<\/p>\n

Across a luminous dream of spirit-space<\/p>\n

She builds creation like a rainbow bridge<\/p>\n

Between the original Silence and the Void.<\/p>\n

A net is made of the mobile universe;<\/p>\n

She weaves a snare for the conscious Infinite.<\/p>\n

A knowledge is with her that conceals its steps<\/p>\n

And seems a mute omnipotent Ignorance.<\/p>\n

A might is with her that makes wonders true;<\/p>\n

The incredible is her stuff of common fact.<\/p>\n

Her purposes, her workings riddles prove;<\/p>\n

Examined, they grow other than they were,<\/p>\n

Explained, they seem yet more inexplicable.<\/p>\n

Even in our world a mystery has reigned<\/p>\n

Earth’s cunning screen of trivial plainness hides;<\/p>\n

Her larger levels are of sorceries made.<\/p>\n

There the enigma shows its splendid prism,<\/p>\n

There is no deep disguise of commonness;<\/p>\n

Occult, profound comes all experience,<\/p>\n

Marvel is ever new, miracle divine.<\/p>\n

There is a screened burden, a mysterious touch,<\/p>\n

There is a secrecy of hidden sense.<\/p>\n

Although no earthen mask weighs on her face,<\/p>\n

Into herself she flees from her own sight.<\/p>\n

All forms are tokens of some veiled idea <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 182<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Whose covert purpose lurks from mind’s pursuit,<\/p>\n

Yet is a womb of sovereign consequence.<\/p>\n

There every thought and feeling is an act,<\/p>\n

And every act a symbol and a sign,<\/p>\n

And every symbol hides a living power.<\/p>\n

A universe she builds from truths and myths,<\/p>\n

But what she needed most she cannot build;<\/p>\n

All shown is a figure or copy of the Truth,<\/p>\n

But the Real veils from her its mystic face.<\/p>\n

All else she finds, there lacks eternity;<\/p>\n

All is sought out but missed the Infinite.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A consciousness lit by a Truth above<\/p>\n

Was felt; it saw the light but not the Truth:<\/p>\n

It caught the Idea and built from it a world;<\/p>\n

It made an Image there and called it God.<\/p>\n

Yet something true and inward harboured there.<\/p>\n

The beings of that world of greater life,<\/p>\n

Tenants of a larger air and freer space,<\/p>\n

Live not by the body or in outward things:<\/p>\n

A deeper living was their seat of self.<\/p>\n

In that intense domain of intimacy<\/p>\n

Objects dwell as companions of the soul;<\/p>\n

The body’s actions are a minor script,<\/p>\n

The surface rendering of a life within.<\/p>\n

All forces are Life’s retinue in that world<\/p>\n

And thought and body as her handmaids move.<\/p>\n

The universal widenesses give her room:<\/p>\n

All feel the cosmic movement in their acts<\/p>\n

And are the
\ninstruments of her cosmic might,<\/p>\n

Or their own self they make their universe.<\/p>\n

In all who have risen
\nto a greater Life<\/p>\n

A voice of unborn things whispers to the ear,<\/p>\n

To their eyes visited by some high sunlight<\/p>\n

Aspiration shows the image of a crown:<\/p>\n

To work out a seed that she has thrown within, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 183<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

To achieve her power in them her creatures live.<\/p>\n

Each is a greatness growing towards the heights<\/p>\n

Or from his inner centre oceans out;<\/p>\n

In circling ripples of concentric power<\/p>\n

They swallow, glutted, their environment.<\/p>\n

Even of that largeness many a cabin make;<\/p>\n

In narrower breadths and briefer vistas pent<\/p>\n

They live content with some small greatness won.<\/p>\n

To rule the little empire of themselves,<\/p>\n

To be a figure in their private world<\/p>\n

And make the milieu’s joys and griefs their own<\/p>\n

And satisfy their life-motives and life-wants<\/p>\n

Is charge enough and office for this strength,<\/p>\n

A steward of the Person and his fate.<\/p>\n

This was transition-line and starting-point,<\/p>\n

A first immigration into heavenliness,<\/p>\n

For all who cross into that brilliant sphere:<\/p>\n

These are the kinsmen of our earthly race;<\/p>\n

This region borders on our mortal state.<\/p>\n

This wider world our greater movements gives,<\/p>\n

Its strong formations build our growing selves;<\/p>\n

Its creatures are our brighter replicas,<\/p>\n

Complete the types we only initiate<\/p>\n

And are securely what we strive to be.<\/p>\n

As if thought-out eternal characters,<\/p>\n

Entire, not pulled as we by contrary tides,<\/p>\n

They follow the unseen leader in the heart,<\/p>\n

Their lives obey the inner nature’s law.<\/p>\n

There is kept grandeur’s store, the hero’s mould;<\/p>\n

The soul is the watchful builder of its fate;<\/p>\n

None is a spirit indifferent and inert;<\/p>\n

They choose their side, they see the god they adore.<\/p>\n

A battle is joined between the true and false,<\/p>\n

A pilgrimage sets out to the divine Light.<\/p>\n

For even Ignorance there aspires to know<\/p>\n

And shines with the lustre of a distant star; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 184<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There is a knowledge in the heart of sleep<\/p>\n

And Nature comes to them as a conscious force.<\/p>\n

An ideal is their leader and their king:<\/p>\n

Aspiring to the monarchy of the sun<\/p>\n

They call in Truth for their high government,<\/p>\n

Hold her incarnate in their daily acts<\/p>\n

And fill their thoughts with her inspired voice<\/p>\n

And shape their lives into her breathing form,<\/p>\n

Till in her sun-gold godhead they too share.<\/p>\n

Or to the truth of Darkness they subscribe;<\/p>\n

Whether for Heaven or Hell they must wage war:<\/p>\n

Warriors of Good, they serve a shining cause<\/p>\n

Or are Evil’s soldiers in the pay of Sin.<\/p>\n

For evil and good an equal tenure keep<\/p>\n

Wherever Knowledge is Ignorance’s twin.<\/p>\n

All powers of Life towards their godhead tend<\/p>\n

In the wideness and the daring of that air,<\/p>\n

Each builds its temple and expands its cult,<\/p>\n

And Sin too there is a divinity.<\/p>\n

Affirming the beauty and splendour of her law<\/p>\n

She claims life as her natural domain,<\/p>\n

Assumes the world’s throne or dons the papal robe:<\/p>\n

Her worshippers proclaim her sacred right.<\/p>\n

A red-tiaraed falsehood they revere,<\/p>\n

Worship the shadow of a crooked
\ngod,<\/p>\n

Admit the black Idea that twists the brain<\/p>\n

Or lie with the harlot Power that slays the
\nSoul.<\/p>\n

A mastering virtue statuesques the pose,<\/p>\n

Or a titan passion goads to a proud unrest:<\/p>\n

At Wisdom’s altar they are kings and priests<\/p>\n

Or their life a sacrifice to an idol of Power.<\/p>\n

Or Beauty shines on them like a wandering star;<\/p>\n

Too far to reach, passionate they follow her light;<\/p>\n

In Art and Life they catch the All-Beautiful’s ray<\/p>\n

And make the world their radiant treasure house:<\/p>\n

Even common figures are with marvel robed; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 185<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A charm and greatness locked in every hour<\/p>\n

Awakes the joy which sleeps in all things made.<\/p>\n

A mighty victory or a mighty fall,<\/p>\n

A throne in heaven or a pit in hell,<\/p>\n

The dual Energy they have justified<\/p>\n

And marked their souls with her tremendous seal:<\/p>\n

Whatever Fate may do to them they have earned;<\/p>\n

Something they have done, something they have been, they
\nlive.<\/p>\n

There Matter is soul’s result and not its cause.<\/p>\n

In a contrary balance to earth’s truth of things<\/p>\n

The gross weighs less, the subtle counts for more;<\/p>\n

On inner values hangs the outer plan.<\/p>\n

As quivers with the thought the expressive word,<\/p>\n

As yearns the act with the passion of the soul<\/p>\n

This world’s apparent sensible design<\/p>\n

Looks vibrant back to some interior might.<\/p>\n

A Mind not limited by external sense<\/p>\n

Gave figures to the spirit’s imponderables,<\/p>\n

The world’s impacts without channels registered<\/p>\n

And turned into the body’s concrete thrill<\/p>\n

The vivid workings of a bodiless Force;<\/p>\n

Powers here subliminal that act unseen<\/p>\n

Or in ambush crouch waiting behind the wall<\/p>\n

Came out in front uncovering their face.<\/p>\n

The occult grew there overt, the obvious kept<\/p>\n

A covert turn and shouldered the unknown;<\/p>\n

The unseen was felt and jostled visible shapes.<\/p>\n

In the communion of two meeting minds<\/p>\n

Thought looked at thought and had no need of speech;<\/p>\n

Emotion clasped emotion in two hearts,<\/p>\n

They felt each other’s thrill in the flesh and nerves<\/p>\n

Or melted each in each and grew immense<\/p>\n

As when two houses burn and fire joins fire:<\/p>\n

Hate grappled hate and love broke in on love,<\/p>\n

Will wrestled with will on mind’s invisible ground;<\/p>\n

Others’ sensations passing through like waves <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 186<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Left quivering the subtle body’s frame,<\/p>\n

Their anger rushed galloping in brute attack,<\/p>\n

A charge of trampling hooves on shaken soil;<\/p>\n

One felt another’s grief invade the breast,<\/p>\n

Another’s joy exulting ran through the blood:<\/p>\n

Hearts could draw close through distance, voices near<\/p>\n

That spoke upon the shore of alien seas.<\/p>\n

There beat a throb of living interchange:<\/p>\n

Being felt being even when afar<\/p>\n

And consciousness replied to consciousness.<\/p>\n

And yet the ultimate oneness was not there.<\/p>\n

There was a separateness of soul from soul:<\/p>\n

An inner wall of silence could be built,<\/p>\n

An armour of conscious might protect and shield;<\/p>\n

The being could be closed in and solitary;<\/p>\n

One could remain apart in self, alone.<\/p>\n

Identity was not yet nor union’s peace.<\/p>\n

All was imperfect still, half-known, half-done:<\/p>\n

The miracle of Inconscience overpassed,<\/p>\n

The miracle of the
\nSuperconscient still<\/p>\n

Unknown, self-wrapped, unfelt, unknowable,<\/p>\n

Looked down on them, origin of all they were.<\/p>\n

As forms they came of the formless Infinite,<\/p>\n

As names lived of a nameless Eternity.<\/p>\n

The beginning and the end were there occult;<\/p>\n

A middle term worked unexplained, abrupt:<\/p>\n

They were words that spoke to a vast wordless Truth,<\/p>\n

They were figures crowding an unfinished sum.<\/p>\n

None truly knew himself or knew the world<\/p>\n

Or the Reality living there enshrined:<\/p>\n

Only they knew what Mind could take and build<\/p>\n

Out of the secret Supermind’s huge store.<\/p>\n

A darkness under them, a bright Void above,<\/p>\n

Uncertain they lived in a great climbing
\nspace;<\/p>\n

By mysteries they explained a Mystery,<\/p>\n

A riddling answer met the riddle of things. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 187<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

As he moved in this ether of ambiguous life,<\/p>\n

Himself he grew a riddle to himself;<\/p>\n

As symbols he saw all and sought their sense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Across the leaping springs of death and birth<\/p>\n

And over shifting borders of soul-change,<\/p>\n

A hunter on the Spirit’s creative track,<\/p>\n

He followed in life’s fine and mighty trails<\/p>\n

Pursuing her sealed formidable delight<\/p>\n

In a perilous adventure without close.<\/p>\n

At first no aim appeared in these large steps:<\/p>\n

Only the wide source he saw of all things here<\/p>\n

Looking towards a wider source beyond.<\/p>\n

For as she drew away from earthly lines,<\/p>\n

A tenser drag was felt from the Unknown,<\/p>\n

A higher context of delivering thought<\/p>\n

Drove her towards marvel and discovery;<\/p>\n

There came a high release from pettier cares,<\/p>\n

A mightier image of desire and hope,<\/p>\n

A vaster formula, a greater scene.<\/p>\n

Ever she circled towards some far-off Light:<\/p>\n

Her signs still covered more than they revealed;<\/p>\n

But tied to some immediate sight and will<\/p>\n

They lost their purport in the joy of use,<\/p>\n

Till stripped of their infinite meaning they became<\/p>\n

A cipher gleaming with unreal sense.<\/p>\n

Armed with a magical and haunted bow<\/p>\n

She aimed at a target kept invisible<\/p>\n

And ever deemed remote though always near.<\/p>\n

As one who spells illumined characters,<\/p>\n

The key-book of a crabbed magician text,<\/p>\n

He scanned her subtle tangled weird designs<\/p>\n

And the screened difficult theorem of her clues,<\/p>\n

Traced in the monstrous sands of desert Time<\/p>\n

The thread beginnings of her titan works,<\/p>\n

Watched her charade of action for some hint, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 188<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Read the No-gestures of her silhouettes,<\/p>\n

And strove to capture in their burdened drift<\/p>\n

The dance-fantasia of her sequences<\/p>\n

Escaping into rhythmic mystery,<\/p>\n

A glimmer of fugitive feet on fleeing soil.<\/p>\n

In the labyrinth pattern of her thoughts and hopes<\/p>\n

And the byways of her intimate desires,<\/p>\n

In the complex corners crowded with her dreams<\/p>\n

And rounds crossed by an intrigue of irrelevant rounds,<\/p>\n

A wanderer straying
\namid fugitive scenes<\/p>\n

He lost its signs and chased each failing guess.<\/p>\n

Ever he met key-words, ignorant of their key.<\/p>\n

A sun that dazzled its own eye of sight,<\/p>\n

A luminous enigma’s brilliant hood<\/p>\n

Lit the dense purple barrier of thought’s sky:<\/p>\n

A dim large trance showed to the night her stars.<\/p>\n

As if sitting near an open window’s gap,<\/p>\n

He read by lightning-flash on crowding flash<\/p>\n

Chapters of her metaphysical romance<\/p>\n

Of the soul’s search for lost Reality<\/p>\n

And her fictions drawn from spirit’s authentic fact,<\/p>\n

Her caprices and conceits and meanings locked,<\/p>\n

Her rash unseizable freaks and mysteried turns.<\/p>\n

The magnificent wrappings of her secrecy<\/p>\n

That fold her desirable body out of sight,<\/p>\n

The strange significant forms woven on her robe,<\/p>\n

Her meaningful outlines of the souls of things<\/p>\n

He saw, her false transparencies of thought-hue,<\/p>\n

Her rich brocades with imaged fancies sewn<\/p>\n

And mutable masks and broideries of disguise.<\/p>\n

A thousand baffling faces of the Truth<\/p>\n

Looked at him from her forms with unknown eyes<\/p>\n

And wordless mouths unrecognisable<\/p>\n

Spoke from the figures of her masquerade,<\/p>\n

Or peered from the recondite magnificence<\/p>\n

And subtle splendour of her draperies. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 189<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

In sudden scintillations of the
\nunknown,<\/p>\n

Inexpressive sounds became veridical,<\/p>\n

Ideas that seemed unmeaning flashed out truth;<\/p>\n

Voices that came from unseen waiting worlds<\/p>\n

Uttered the syllables of the Unmanifest<\/p>\n

To clothe the body of the mystic Word,<\/p>\n

And wizard diagrams of the occult Law<\/p>\n

Sealed some precise unreadable harmony,<\/p>\n

Or used hue and figure to reconstitute<\/p>\n

The herald blazon of Time’s secret things.<\/p>\n

In her green wildernesses and lurking depths,<\/p>\n

In her thickets of joy where danger clasps delight,<\/p>\n

He glimpsed the hidden wings of her songster hopes,<\/p>\n

A glimmer of blue and gold and scarlet fire.<\/p>\n

In her covert lanes, bordering her chance field-paths<\/p>\n

And by her singing rivulets and calm lakes<\/p>\n

He found the glow of her golden fruits of bliss<\/p>\n

And the beauty of her flowers of dream and muse.<\/p>\n

As if a miracle of heart’s change by joy<\/p>\n

He watched in the alchemist radiance of her suns<\/p>\n

The crimson outburst of one secular flower<\/p>\n

On the tree of sacrifice of spiritual love.<\/p>\n

In the sleepy splendour of her noons he saw,<\/p>\n

A perpetual repetition through the hours,<\/p>\n

Thought’s dance of dragon-flies on mystery’s stream<\/p>\n

That skim but never test its murmurs’ race,<\/p>\n

And heard the laughter of her rose desires<\/p>\n

Running as if to escape from longed-for hands,<\/p>\n

Jingling sweet anklet-bells of fantasy.<\/p>\n

Amidst live symbols of her occult power<\/p>\n

He moved and felt them as close real forms:<\/p>\n

In that life more concrete than the lives of men<\/p>\n

Throbbed heart-beats of the hidden reality:<\/p>\n

Embodied was there what we but think and feel,<\/p>\n

Self-framed what here takes outward borrowed shapes.<\/p>\n

A comrade of Silence on her austere heights <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 190<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Accepted by her mighty loneliness,<\/p>\n

He stood with her on meditating peaks<\/p>\n

Where life and being are a sacrament<\/p>\n

Offered to the Reality beyond,<\/p>\n

And saw her loose into
\nInfinity<\/p>\n

Her hooded eagles of significance,<\/p>\n

Messengers of Thought to the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

Identified in soul-vision and soul-sense,<\/p>\n

Entering into her depths as into a house,<\/p>\n

All he became that she was or longed to be,<\/p>\n

He thought with her thoughts and journeyed with her steps,<\/p>\n

Lived with her breath and scanned all with her eyes<\/p>\n

That he might learn the secret of her soul.<\/p>\n

A witness overmastered by his scene,<\/p>\n

He admired her splendid front of pomp and play<\/p>\n

And the marvels of her rich and delicate craft,<\/p>\n

And thrilled to the insistence of her cry;<\/p>\n

Impassioned he bore the sorceries of her might,<\/p>\n

Felt laid on him her abrupt mysterious will,<\/p>\n

Her hands that knead fate in their violent grasp,<\/p>\n

Her touch that moves, her powers that seize and drive.<\/p>\n

But this too he saw, her soul that wept within,<\/p>\n

Her seekings vain that clutch at fleeing truth,<\/p>\n

Her hopes whose sombre gaze mates with despair,<\/p>\n

The passion that possessed her longing limbs,<\/p>\n

The trouble and rapture of her yearning breasts,<\/p>\n

Her mind that toils unsatisfied with its fruits,<\/p>\n

Her heart that captures not the one Beloved.<\/p>\n

Always he met a veiled and seeking Force,<\/p>\n

An exiled goddess building mimic heavens,<\/p>\n

A Sphinx whose eyes look up to a hidden Sun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ever he felt near a spirit in her forms:<\/p>\n

Its passive presence was her nature’s strength;<\/p>\n

This sole is real in apparent things,<\/p>\n

Even upon earth the spirit is life’s key, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 191<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

But her solid outsides nowhere bear its trace.<\/p>\n

Its stamp on her acts is undiscoverable.<\/p>\n

A pathos of lost heights is its appeal.<\/p>\n

Only sometimes is caught a shadowy line<\/p>\n

That seems a hint of veiled reality.<\/p>\n

Life stared at him with vague confused outlines<\/p>\n

Offering a picture the eyes could not keep,<\/p>\n

A story that was yet not written there.<\/p>\n

As in a fragmentary half-lost design<\/p>\n

Life’s meanings fled from the pursuing eye.<\/p>\n

Life’s visage hides life’s real self from sight;<\/p>\n

Life’s secret sense is written within, above.<\/p>\n

The thought that gives it sense lives far beyond;<\/p>\n

It is not seen in its half-finished design.<\/p>\n

In vain we hope to read the baffling signs<\/p>\n

Or find the word of the half-played charade.<\/p>\n

Only in that greater life a cryptic thought<\/p>\n

Is found, is hinted some interpreting word<\/p>\n

That makes the earth-myth a tale intelligible.<\/p>\n

Something was seen at last that looked like truth.<\/p>\n

In a half-lit air of hazardous mystery<\/p>\n

The eye that looks at the dark half of truth<\/p>\n

Made out an image mid a vivid blur<\/p>\n

And peering through a mist of subtle tints<\/p>\n

He saw a half-blind chained divinity<\/p>\n

Bewildered by the world in which he moved,<\/p>\n

Yet conscious of some light prompting his soul.<\/p>\n

Attracted to strange far-off shimmerings,<\/p>\n

Led by the fluting of a distant Player<\/p>\n

He sought his way amid life’s laughter and call<\/p>\n

And the index chaos of her myriad steps<\/p>\n

Towards some total deep infinitude.<\/p>\n

Around crowded the forest of her signs:<\/p>\n

At hazard he read by arrow-leaps of Thought<\/p>\n

That hit the mark by guess or luminous chance<\/p>\n

Her changing coloured road-lights of idea <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 192<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And her signals of uncertain swift event,<\/p>\n

The hieroglyphs of her symbol pageantries<\/p>\n

And her landmarks in the tangled paths of Time.<\/p>\n

In her mazes of approach and of retreat<\/p>\n

To every side she draws him and repels,<\/p>\n

But drawn too near escapes from his embrace;<\/p>\n

All ways she leads him but no way is sure.<\/p>\n

Allured by the many-toned marvel of her chant,<\/p>\n

Attracted by the witchcraft of her moods<\/p>\n

And moved by her casual touch to joy and grief,<\/p>\n

He loses himself in her but wins her not.<\/p>\n

A fugitive paradise smiles at him from her eyes:<\/p>\n

He dreams of her beauty made for ever his,<\/p>\n

He dreams of his mastery her limbs shall bear,<\/p>\n

He dreams of the magic of her breasts of bliss.<\/p>\n

In her illumined script, her fanciful<\/p>\n

Translation of God’s pure original text,<\/p>\n

He thinks to read the Scripture Wonderful,<\/p>\n

Hieratic key to unknown beatitudes.<\/p>\n

But the Word of Life is hidden in its script,<\/p>\n

The chant of Life has lost its divine note.<\/p>\n

Unseen, a captive in a house of sound,<\/p>\n

The spirit lost in the splendour of a dream<\/p>\n

Listens to a thousand-voiced illusion’s ode.<\/p>\n

A delicate weft of sorcery steals the heart<\/p>\n

Or a fiery magic tints her tones and hues,<\/p>\n

Yet they but wake a thrill of transient grace;<\/p>\n

A vagrant march
\nstruck by the wanderer Time<\/p>\n

They call to a brief unsatisfied delight<\/p>\n

Or wallow in ravishments of mind and sense,<\/p>\n

But miss the luminous answer of the soul.<\/p>\n

A blind heart-throb that reaches joy through tears,<\/p>\n

A yearning towards peaks for ever unreached,<\/p>\n

An ecstasy of unfulfilled desire<\/p>\n

Track the last heavenward climbings of her voice.<\/p>\n

Transmuted are past suffering’s memories <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 193<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Into an old sadness’s
\nsweet escaping train:<\/p>\n

Turned are her tears to gems of diamond pain,<\/p>\n

Her sorrow into a magic crown of song.<\/p>\n

Brief are her snatches of felicity<\/p>\n

That touch the surface, then escape or die:<\/p>\n

A lost remembrance echoes in her depths,<\/p>\n

A deathless longing is hers, a veiled self’s call;<\/p>\n

A prisoner in the mortal’s limiting world,<\/p>\n

A spirit wounded by life sobs in her breast;<\/p>\n

A cherished suffering is her deepest cry.<\/p>\n

A wanderer on forlorn despairing routes,<\/p>\n

Along the roads of sound a frustrate voice<\/p>\n

Forsaken cries to a forgotten bliss.<\/p>\n

Astray in the echo caverns of Desire,<\/p>\n

It guards the phantoms of a soul’s dead hopes<\/p>\n

And keeps alive the voice of perished things<\/p>\n

Or lingers upon sweet and errant notes<\/p>\n

Hunting for pleasure in the heart of pain.<\/p>\n

A fateful hand has touched the cosmic chords<\/p>\n

And the intrusion of a troubled strain<\/p>\n

Covers the inner music’s hidden key<\/p>\n

That guides unheard the surface cadences.<\/p>\n

Yet is it joy to live and to create<\/p>\n

And joy to love and labour though all fails,<\/p>\n

And joy to seek though all we find deceives<\/p>\n

And all on which we lean betrays our trust;<\/p>\n

Yet something in its depths was worth the pain,<\/p>\n

A passionate memory haunts with ecstasy’s fire.<\/p>\n

Even grief has joy hidden beneath its roots:<\/p>\n

For nothing is truly vain the One has made:<\/p>\n

In our defeated hearts God’s strength survives<\/p>\n

And victory’s star still lights our desperate road;<\/p>\n

Our death is made a passage to new worlds.<\/p>\n

This to Life’s music gives its anthem swell.<\/p>\n

To all she lends the glory of her voice;<\/p>\n

Heaven’s raptures whisper to her heart and pass, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 194<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Earth’s transient yearnings cry from her lips and fade.<\/p>\n

Alone the God-given hymn escapes her art<\/p>\n

That came with her from her spiritual home<\/p>\n

But stopped half-way and failed, a silent word<\/p>\n

Awake in some deep pause of waiting worlds,<\/p>\n

A murmur suspended in eternity’s hush:<\/p>\n

But no breath comes from the supernal peace:<\/p>\n

A sumptuous interlude occupies the ear<\/p>\n

And the heart listens and the soul consents;<\/p>\n

An evanescent music it repeats<\/p>\n

Wasting on transience Time’s eternity.<\/p>\n

A tremolo of the voices of the hours<\/p>\n

Oblivious screens the high intended theme<\/p>\n

The self-embodying spirit came to play<\/p>\n

On the vast clavichord of Nature-Force.<\/p>\n

Only a mighty murmur here and there<\/p>\n

Of the eternal Word, the blissful Voice<\/p>\n

Or Beauty’s touch transfiguring heart and sense,<\/p>\n

A wandering splendour and a mystic cry,<\/p>\n

Recalls the strength and sweetness heard no more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is the gap, here stops or sinks life’s force;<\/p>\n

This deficit paupers the magician’s skill:<\/p>\n

This want makes all the rest seem thin and bare.<\/p>\n

A half-sight draws the horizon of her acts:<\/p>\n

Her depths remember what she came to do,<\/p>\n

But the mind has forgotten or the heart mistakes:<\/p>\n

In Nature’s endless lines is lost the God.<\/p>\n

In knowledge to sum up omniscience,<\/p>\n

In action to erect the Omnipotent,<\/p>\n

To create her Creator here was her heart’s conceit,<\/p>\n

To invade the cosmic scene with utter God.<\/p>\n

Toiling to transform the still far Absolute<\/p>\n

Into an all-fulfilling epiphany,<\/p>\n

Into an utterance of the Ineffable,<\/p>\n

She would bring the glory here of the Absolute’s force, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 195<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Change poise into creation’s rhythmic swing,<\/p>\n

Marry with a sky of calm a sea of bliss.<\/p>\n

A fire to call eternity into Time,<\/p>\n

Make body’s joy as vivid as the soul’s,<\/p>\n

Earth she would lift to neighbourhood with heaven,<\/p>\n

Labours life to equate with the Supreme<\/p>\n

And reconcile the Eternal and the Abyss.<\/p>\n

Her pragmatism of the transcendent Truth<\/p>\n

Fills silence with the voices of the gods,<\/p>\n

But in the cry the single Voice is lost.<\/p>\n

For Nature’s vision climbs beyond her acts.<\/p>\n

A life of gods in heaven she sees above,<\/p>\n

A demi-god emerging from an ape<\/p>\n

Is all she can in our mortal element.<\/p>\n

Here the half-god, the half-titan are her peak:<\/p>\n

This greater life wavers twixt earth and sky.<\/p>\n

A poignant paradox pursues her dreams:<\/p>\n

Her hooded energy moves an ignorant world<\/p>\n

To look for a joy her own strong clasp puts off::<\/p>\n

In her embrace it cannot turn to its source.<\/p>\n

Immense her power, endless her act’s vast drive,<\/p>\n

Astray is its significance and lost.<\/p>\n

Although she carries in her secret breast<\/p>\n

The law and journeying curve of all things born<\/p>\n

Her knowledge partial seems, her purpose small;<\/p>\n

On a soil of yearning tread her sumptuous hours.<\/p>\n

A leaden Nescience weighs the wings of Thought,<\/p>\n

Her power oppresses the being with its garbs,<\/p>\n

Her action prisons its immortal gaze.<\/p>\n

A sense of limit haunts her masteries<\/p>\n

And nowhere is assured content or peace:<\/p>\n

For all the depth and beauty of her work<\/p>\n

A wisdom lacks that sets the spirit free.<\/p>\n

An old and faded charm had now her face<\/p>\n

And palled for him her quick and curious lore;<\/p>\n

His wide soul asked a deeper joy than hers. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 196<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Out of her daedal lines he sought escape;<\/p>\n

But neither gate of horn nor ivory<\/p>\n

He found nor postern
\nof spiritual sight.<\/p>\n

There was no issue from that dreamlike space.<\/p>\n

Our being must move eternally through Time;<\/p>\n

Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease;<\/p>\n

A secret Will compels us to endure.<\/p>\n

Our life’s repose is in the Infinite;<\/p>\n

It cannot end, its end is Life supreme.<\/p>\n

Death is a passage, not the goal of our walk:<\/p>\n

Some ancient deep impulsion labours on:<\/p>\n

Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash,<\/p>\n

Carried from birth to birth, from world to world,<\/p>\n

Our acts prolong after the body’s fall<\/p>\n

The old perpetual journey without pause.<\/p>\n

No silent peak is found where Time can rest.<\/p>\n

This was a magic stream that reached no sea.<\/p>\n

However far he went, wherever turned,<\/p>\n

The wheel of works ran with him and outstripped;<\/p>\n

Always a farther task was left to do.<\/p>\n

A beat of action and a cry of search<\/p>\n

For ever grew in that unquiet world;<\/p>\n

A busy murmur filled the heart of Time.<\/p>\n

All was contrivance and unceasing stir.<\/p>\n

A hundred ways to live were tried in vain:<\/p>\n

A sameness that assumed a thousand forms<\/p>\n

Strove to escape from its long monotone<\/p>\n

And made new things that soon were like the old.<\/p>\n

A curious decoration lured the eye<\/p>\n

And novel values furbished ancient themes<\/p>\n

To cheat the mind with the idea of change.<\/p>\n

A different picture that was still the same<\/p>\n

Appeared upon the cosmic vague background.<\/p>\n

Only another labyrinthine house<\/p>\n

Of creatures and their doings and events,<\/p>\n

A city of the traffic of bound souls, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 197<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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A market of creation
\nand her wares<\/p>\n

Was offered to the labouring mind and heart.<\/p>\n

A circuit ending where it first began<\/p>\n

Is dubbed the forward and eternal march<\/p>\n

Of progress on perfection’s unknown road.<\/p>\n

Each final scheme leads to a sequel plan.<\/p>\n

Yet every new departure seems the last,<\/p>\n

Inspired evangel, theory’s ultimate peak,<\/p>\n

Proclaiming a panacea for all Time’s ills<\/p>\n

Or carrying thought in its ultimate zenith flight<\/p>\n

And trumpeting supreme discovery;<\/p>\n

Each brief idea, a structure perishable,<\/p>\n

Publishes the immortality of its rule,<\/p>\n

Its claim to be the perfect form of things,<\/p>\n

Truth’s last epitome, Time’s golden best.<\/p>\n

But nothing has been achieved of infinite worth:<\/p>\n

A world made ever anew, never complete,<\/p>\n

Piled always half-attempts on lost attempts<\/p>\n

And saw a fragment as the eternal Whole.<\/p>\n

In the aimless mounting total of things done<\/p>\n

Existence seemed a vain necessity’s act,<\/p>\n

A wrestle of eternal opposites<\/p>\n

In a clasped antagonism’s close-locked embrace,<\/p>\n

A play without d\u00e9nouement or idea,<\/p>\n

A hunger march of lives without a goal,<\/p>\n

Or, written on a bare blackboard of Space,<\/p>\n

A futile and recurring sum of souls,<\/p>\n

A hope that failed, a light that never shone,<\/p>\n

The labour of an unaccomplished Force<\/p>\n

Tied to its acts in a dim eternity.<\/p>\n

There is no end or none can yet be seen:<\/p>\n

Although defeated, life must struggle on;<\/p>\n

Always she sees a crown she cannot grasp;<\/p>\n

Her eyes are fixed beyond her fallen state.<\/p>\n

There quivers still within her breast and ours<\/p>\n

A glory that was once and is no more, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 198<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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Or there calls to us from some unfulfilled beyond<\/p>\n

A greatness yet unreached by the halting world.<\/p>\n

In a memory behind our mortal sense<\/p>\n

A dream persists of larger happier air<\/p>\n

Breathing around free hearts of joy and love,<\/p>\n

Forgotten by us, immortal in lost Time.<\/p>\n

A ghost of bliss pursues her haunted depths;<\/p>\n

For she remembers still
\nthough now so far<\/p>\n

Her realm of golden ease and glad desire<\/p>\n

And the beauty and strength and happiness that were hers<\/p>\n

In the sweetness of her glowing paradise,<\/p>\n

In her kingdom of immortal ecstasy<\/p>\n

Half-way between God’s silence and the Abyss.<\/p>\n

This knowledge in our hidden parts we keep;<\/p>\n

Awake to a vague mystery’s appeal,<\/p>\n

We meet a deep unseen Reality<\/p>\n

Far truer than the world’s face of present
\nTruth:<\/p>\n

We are chased by a self we cannot now recall<\/p>\n

And moved by a Spirit we must still become.<\/p>\n

As one who has lost the kingdom of his soul,<\/p>\n

We look back to some god-phase of our birth<\/p>\n

Other than this imperfect creature here<\/p>\n

And hope in this or a diviner world<\/p>\n

To recover yet from Heaven’s patient guard<\/p>\n

What by our mind’s forgetfulness we miss,<\/p>\n

Our being’s natural felicity,<\/p>\n

Our heart’s delight we have exchanged for grief,<\/p>\n

The body’s thrill we bartered for mere pain,<\/p>\n

The bliss for which our mortal nature yearns<\/p>\n

As yearns an obscure moth to blazing Light.<\/p>\n

Our life is a march to a victory never won.<\/p>\n

This wave of being longing for delight,<\/p>\n

This eager turmoil of unsatisfied strengths,<\/p>\n

These long far files of forward-striving hopes<\/p>\n

Lift worshipping eyes to the blue Void called heaven<\/p>\n

Looking for the golden Hand that never came, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 199<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The advent for which all creation waits,<\/p>\n

The beautiful visage of Eternity<\/p>\n

That shall appear upon the roads of Time.<\/p>\n

Yet still to ourselves we say rekindling faith,<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, surely one day he shall come to our cry,<\/p>\n

One day he shall create our life anew<\/p>\n

And utter the magic formula of peace<\/p>\n

And bring perfection to the scheme of things.<\/p>\n

One day he shall descend to life and earth,<\/p>\n

Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors,<\/p>\n

Into a world that cries to him for help,<\/p>\n

And bring the truth that sets the spirit free,<\/p>\n

The joy that is the baptism of the soul,<\/p>\n

The strength that is the outstretched arm of Love.<\/p>\n

One day he shall lift his beauty’s dreadful veil,<\/p>\n

Impose delight on the world’s beating heart<\/p>\n

And bare his secret body of light and bliss.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now we strain to reach an unknown goal:<\/p>\n

There is no end of seeking and of birth,<\/p>\n

There is no end of dying and return;<\/p>\n

The life that wins its aim asks greater aims,<\/p>\n

The life that fails and dies must live again;<\/p>\n

Till it has found itself it cannot cease.<\/p>\n

All must be done for which life and death were made.<\/p>\n

But who shall say that even then is rest?<\/p>\n

Or there repose and action are the same<\/p>\n

In the deep breast of God’s supreme delight.<\/p>\n

In a high state where ignorance is no more,<\/p>\n

Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss,<\/p>\n

Repose God’s motionless creative force,<\/p>\n

Action a ripple in the Infinite<\/p>\n

And birth a gesture of Eternity.<\/p>\n

A sun of transfiguration still can shine<\/p>\n

And Night can bare its core of mystic light;<\/p>\n

The self-cancelling, self-afflicting paradox<\/p>\n

Into a self-luminous mystery might change, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 200<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The imbroglio into a joyful miracle.<\/p>\n

Then God could be visible here, here take a shape;<\/p>\n

Disclosed would be the spirit’s identity;<\/p>\n

Life would reveal her true immortal face.<\/p>\n

But now a termless labour is her fate:<\/p>\n

In its recurrent decimal of events<\/p>\n

Birth, death appear
\nas its vibrating point;<\/p>\n

The old question-mark margins each finished page,<\/p>\n

Each volume of her effort’s history.<\/p>\n

A limping Yes through the aeons journeys still<\/p>\n

Accompanied by an eternal No.<\/p>\n

All seems in vain, yet endless is the game.<\/p>\n

Impassive turns the ever-circling Wheel,<\/p>\n

Life has no issue, death brings no release.<\/p>\n

A prisoner of itself the being lives<\/p>\n

And keeps its futile immortality;<\/p>\n

Extinction is denied, its sole escape.<\/p>\n

An error of the gods has made the world.<\/p>\n

Or indifferent the Eternal watches Time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Six <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 201<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

\n

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

  Canto Six    The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life    As one who between dim receding walls Towards the far gleam of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-savitri-volume-28","wpcat-10-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","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=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}