(S 1)
Nothing now moved in the vast brooding space:
A stillness came upon the listening world,
A mute immensity of the Eternal’s peace.
(S 2)
But Aswapati’s heart replied to her, EoS
265 A cry amid the silence of the Vasts:
“How shall I rest content with mortal days
And the dull measure of terrestrial things,
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?
(S 3)
270
Hard is the doom to which thou bindst thy sons!\n
How long shall our spirits battle with the Night
And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,
We who are vessels of a deathless Force
And builders of the godhead of the race?
(S 4)
275 Or if it is thy work I do below
Amid the error and waste of human life
In the vague light of man’s half-conscious mind,
Why breaks not in some distant gleam of thee?
(S 5)
Ever the centuries and millenniums pass.
(S 6)
280
Where in the greyness is thy coming’s ray?
(S 7)
Where is the thunder of thy victory’s wings?
(S 8)
Only we hear the feet of passing gods.
(S 9)
A plan in the occult eternal Mind EoS
Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight,
285
The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,
The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.
(S 10)
All we have done is ever still to do.
(S 11)
All breaks and all renews and is the same.
(S 12)
Huge revolutions of life’s fruitless gyre,
290 The new-born ages perish like the old,
As if the sad Enigma kept its right
Till all is done for which this scene was made.
(S 13)
Too little the strength that now with us is born,
Too faint the light that steals through Nature’s lids,
295 Too scant the joy with which she buys our pain.
(S 14)
In a brute world that knows not its own sense,
Thought-racked upon the wheel of birth we live,
The instruments of an impulse not our own
Moved to achieve with our heart’s blood for price
300 Half-knowledge, half-creations that soon tire.
(S 15)
A foiled immortal soul in perishing limbs, EoS
Baffled and beaten back we labour still;
Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive.
(S 16)
In anguish we labour that from us may rise
EoS
305 A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
The executor of the divine attempt
Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,
Communicant and prophet and lover and king.
(S 17)
310 I know that thy creation cannot fail:
For even through the mists of mortal thought
Infallible are thy mysterious steps,
And, though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,
315 The slow calm logic of Infinity’s pace
And the inviolate sequence of its will.
(S 18)
All life is fixed in an ascending scale
And adamantine is the evolving Law;
In the beginning is prepared the close.
(S 19)
320
This strange irrational product of the mire,
This compromise between the beast and god,
Is not the crown of thy miraculous world.
(S 20)
I know there shall inform the inconscient cells, EoS
At one with Nature and at height with heaven,
325 A spirit vast as the containing sky
And swept with ecstasy from invisible founts,
A god come down and greater by the fall.
(S 21)
A Power arose out of my slumber’s cell.
(S 22)
Abandoning the tardy limp of the hours
330
And the inconstant blink of mortal sight,
There where the Thinker sleeps in too much light
And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye
Hearing the word of Fate from Silence’ heart
In the endless moment of Eternity,
335 It saw from timelessness the works of Time.
(S 23)
Overpassed were the leaden formulas of the Mind,
Overpowered the obstacle of mortal Space:
The unfolding Image showed the things to come.
(S 24)
A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;
340 There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;
Earth was o’errun with fire and the roar of Death
Clamouring to slay a world his hunger had made;
There was a clangour of Destruction’s wings:
The Titan’s battle-cry was in my ears,
345
Alarm and rumour shook the armoured Night.
(S 25)
I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers EoS
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
350 Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
(S 26)
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
355 The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
(S 27)
360 Into the fallen human sphere they came, EoS
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
365
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.
(S 28)
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss, EoS
370
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face.
(S 29)
375 Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart’s force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
(S 30)
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
380 Behind man’s inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:
He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,
He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.
(S 31)
Inheritor of the toil of human time,
385 He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s height,
Earth’s seeing widen into the infinite.
(S 32)
390 Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world; EoS
The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul
And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.
(S 33)
395 O Truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,
400 Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
As if Time dare not open its heart to God.
(S 34)
O radiant fountain of the world’s delight
EoS
World-free and unattainable above,
405
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.
(S 35)
410 One moment fill with thy eternity,
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
(S 36)
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet EoS
415 All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
(S 37)
420 Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”