Book 2: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

Canto One – The World-Stair

(S 1)
ALONE he moved watched by the infinity
Around him and the Unknowable above.
(S 2)
All could be seen that shuns the mortal eye,
All could be known the mind has never grasped;
5 All could be done no mortal will can dare.
(S 3)
A limitless movement filled a limitless peace.
(S 4)
In a profound existence beyond earth’s EoS
Parent or kin to our ideas and dreams
Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul,
10 In an immaterial substance linked to ours
In a deep oneness of all things that are,
The universe of the Unknown arose.
(S 5)
A self-creation without end or pause
Revealed the grandeurs of the Infinite:
15 It flung into the hazards of its play
A million moods, a myriad energies,
The world-shapes that are fancies of its Truth
And the formulas of the freedom of its Force.
(S 6)
It poured into the Ever-stable’s flux
20 A bacchic rapture and revel of Ideas,
A passion and motion of everlastingness.
(S 7)
There rose unborn into the Unchanging’s surge
Thoughts that abide in their deathless consequence,
Words that immortal last though fallen mute,
25 Acts that brought out from Silence its dumb sense,
Lines that convey the inexpressible.
(S 8)
The Eternal’s stillness saw in unmoved joy
His universal Power at work display
In plots of pain and dramas of delight
30 The wonder and beauty of her will to be.
(S 9)
All, even pain, was the soul’s pleasure here; EoS
Here all experience was a single plan,
The thousandfold expression of the One.
(S 10)
All came at once into his single view;
35 Nothing escaped his vast intuitive sight,
Nothing drew near he could not feel as kin:
He was one spirit with that immensity.
(S 11)
Images in a supernal consciousness
Embodying the Unborn who never dies,
40 The structured visions of the cosmic Self
Alive with the touch of being’s eternity
Looked at him like form-bound spiritual thoughts
Figuring the movements of the Ineffable.
(S 12)
Aspects of being donned world-outline; forms
45 That open moving doors on things divine,
Became familiar to his hourly sight;
The symbols of the Spirit’s reality,
The living bodies of the Bodiless
Grew near to him, his daily associates.
(S 13)
50 The exhaustless seeings of the unsleeping Mind, EoS
Letterings of its contact with the invisible,
Surrounded him with countless pointing signs;
The voices of a thousand realms of Life
Missioned to him her mighty messages.
(S 14)
55 The heaven-hints that invade our earthly lives, EoS
The dire imaginations dreamed by Hell,
Which if enacted and experienced here
Our dulled capacity soon would cease to feel
Or our mortal frailty could not long endure,
60 Were set in their sublime proportions there.
(S 15)
There lived out in their self-born atmosphere,
They resumed their topless pitch and native power;
Their fortifying stress upon the soul
Bit deep into the ground of consciousness
65 The passion and purity of their extremes,
The absoluteness of their single cry
And the sovereign sweetness or violent poetry
Of their beautiful or terrible delight.
(S 16)
All thought can know or widest sight perceive EoS
70 And all that thought and sight can never know,
All things occult and rare, remote and strange
Were near to heart’s contact, felt by spirit-sense.
(S 17)
Asking for entry at his nature’s gates EoS
They crowded the widened spaces of his mind,
75 His self-discovery’s flaming witnesses,
Offering their marvel and their multitude.
(S 18)
These now became new portions of himself,
The figures of his spirit’s greater life,
The moving scenery of his large time-walk
80 Or the embroidered tissue of his sense:
These took the place of intimate human things
And moved as close companions of his thoughts,
Or were his soul’s natural environment.
(S 19)
Tireless the heart’s adventure of delight,
85 Endless the kingdoms of the Spirit’s bliss,
Unnumbered tones struck from one harmony’s strings;
Each to its wide-winged universal poise,
Its fathomless feeling of the All in one,
Brought notes of some perfection yet unseen,
90 Its single retreat into Truth’s secrecies,
Its happy sidelight on the Infinite.
(S 20)
All was found there the Unique has dreamed and made
Tinging with ceaseless rapture and surprise
And an opulent beauty of passionate difference
95 The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
(S 21)
Only was missing the sole timeless Word EoS
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit’s perfect sum
100 That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.