(S 1)
A dream disclosed to her the cosmic past,
The crypt-seed and the mystic origins,
115 The shadowy beginnings of world-fate:
A lamp of symbol lighting hidden truth
Imaged to her the world’s significance.
(S 2)
In the indeterminate formlessness of Self EoS
Creation took its first mysterious steps,
120 It made the body’s shape a house of soul
And Matter learned to think and person grew;
She saw Space peopled with the seeds of life
And saw the human creature born in Time.
(S 3)
At first appeared a dim half-neutral tide
125 Of being emerging out of infinite Nought:
A consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast
And pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void.
(S 4)
All was the deed of a blind World-Energy: EoS
Unconscious of her own exploits she worked,
130 Shaping a universe out of the Inane.
(S 5)
In fragmentary beings she grew aware:
A chaos of little sensibilities
Gathered round a small ego’s pin-point head;
In it a sentient creature found its poise,
135 It moved and lived a breathing, thinking whole.
(S 6)
On a dim ocean of subconscient life
A formless surface consciousness awoke:
A stream of thoughts and feelings came and went,
A foam of memories hardened and became
140 A bright crust of habitual sense and thought,
A seat of living personality
And recurrent habits mimicked permanence.
(S 7)
Mind nascent laboured out a mutable form,
It built a mobile house on shifting sands,
145 A floating isle upon a bottomless sea.
(S 8)
A conscious being was by this labour made;
It looked around it on its difficult field
In the green wonderful and perilous earth;
It hoped in a brief body to survive,
150 Relying on Matter’s false eternity.
(S 9)
It felt a godhead in its fragile house;
It saw blue heavens, dreamed immortality.
(S 10)
A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world, EoS
Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,
155 An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts
Leaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.
(S 11)
In his floating house upon the sea of Time EoS
The regent sits at work and never rests:
He is a puppet of the dance of Time;
160 He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call
Compels him with the thronging of life’s need
And the babel of the voices of the world.
(S 12)
This mind no silence knows nor dreamless sleep,
In the incessant circling of its steps
165 Thoughts tread for ever through the listening brain;
It toils like a machine and cannot stop.
(S 13)
Into the body’s many- storeyed rooms EoS
Endless crowd down the dream-god’s messages.
(S 14)
All is a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir,
170 There is a tireless running to and fro,
A haste of movement and a ceaseless cry.
(S 15)
The hurried servant senses answer apace EoS
To every knock upon the outer doors,
Bring in time’s visitors, report each call,
175 Admit the thousand queries and the calls
And the messages of communicating minds
And the heavy business of unnumbered lives
And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.
(S 16)
Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose; EoS
180 He mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams,
He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes,
His night with thin-air visions and dim forms
He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes
And only a moment spends in silent Self.
(S 17)
185 Adventuring into infinite mind-space
He unfolds his wings of thought in inner air,
Or travelling in imagination’s car
Crosses the globe, journeys beneath the stars,
To subtle worlds takes his ethereal course,
190 Visits the Gods on Life’s miraculous peaks,
Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.
(S 18)
This is the little surface of man’s life. EoS
(S 19)
He is this and he is all the universe;
He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;
195 A whole mysterious world is locked within.
(S 20)
Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king EoS
Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;
An epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,
He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:
200 A nameless god in an unapproachable fane,
In the secret adytum of his inmost soul
He guards the being’s covered mysteries
Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates
Or shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.
(S 21)
205 The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful
Casts into the argent purity of his soul
His splendour and his greatness and the light
Of self-creation in Time’s infinity
As into a sublimely mirroring glass.
(S 22)
210 Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God. EoS
(S 23)
But all is there, even God’s opposites;
He is a little front of Nature’s works,
A thinking outline of a cryptic Force.
(S 24)
All she reveals in him that is in her,
215 Her glories walk in him and her darknesses.
(S 25)
Man’s house of life holds not the gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants of life’s ominous nether rooms,
A shadowy world’s stupendous denizens.
(S 26)
220 A careless guardian of his nature’s powers,
Man harbours dangerous forces in his house.
(S 27)
The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn EoS
Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit
And the Beast grovels in his antre den:
225 Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.
(S 28)
Insurgent sometimes raises its huge head
A monstrous mystery lurking in life’s deeps,
The mystery of dark and fallen worlds,
The dread visages of the adversary Kings.
(S 29)
230 The dreadful powers held down within his depths EoS
Become his masters or his ministers;
Enormous they invade his bodily house,
Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life.
(S 30)
Inferno surges into the human air
235 And touches all with a perverting breath..
(S 31)
Grey forces like a thin miasma creep, EoS
Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,
Discolouring the walls of upper mind
In which he lives his fair and specious life,
240 And leave behind a stench of sin and death:
Not only rise in him perverse drifts of thought
And formidable formless influences,
But there come presences and awful shapes:
Tremendous forms and faces mount dim steps
245 And stare at times into his living-rooms,
Or called up for a moment’s passionate work
Lay a dire custom’s claim upon his heart:
Aroused from sleep, they can be bound no more.
(S 32)
Afflicting the daylight and alarming night,
250 Invading at will his outer tenement,
The stark gloom’s grisly dire inhabitants
Mounting into God’s light all light perturb.
(S 33)
All they have touched or seen they make their own, EoS
In Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill,
255 Disrupt thought’s links and musing sequences,
Break through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry
Or they call the inhabitants of the abyss,
Invite the instincts to forbidden joys,
A laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth
260 And with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor.
(S 34)
Impotent to quell his terrible prisoners, EoS
Appalled the householder helpless sits above,
Taken from him his house is his no more.
(S 35)
He is bound and forced, a victim of the play,
265 Or, allured, joys in the mad and mighty din
(S 36)
His nature’s dangerous forces have arisen
And hold at will a rebel’s holiday.
(S 37)
Aroused from the darkness where they crouched in the depths,
Prisoned from the sight, they can be held no more;
270 His nature’s impulses are now his lords.
(S 38)
Once quelled or wearing specious names and vests EoS
Infernal elements, demon powers are there.
(S 39)
Man’s lower nature hides these awful guests.
(S 40)
Their vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.
(S 41)
275 An awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.
(S 42)
In house and house the huge uprising grows:
Hell’s companies are loosed to do their work,
Into the earth-ways they break out from all doors,
Invade with blood-lust and the will to slay
280 And fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world.
(S 43)
Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth; EoS
The terrible Angel smites at every door:
An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
285 All is the prey of the destroying force;
Creation rocks and tremble top and base.
(S 44)
This evil Nature housed in human hearts,
A foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
290 Expel the householder, possess the house.
(S 45)
An opposite potency contradicting God,
A momentary Evil’s almightiness
Has straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts.
(S 46)
It imitates the Godhead it denies, EoS
295 Puts on his figure and assumes his face.
(S 47)
A Manichean creator and destroyer,
This can abolish man, annul his world.
(S 48)
But there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.
(S 1)
A dream disclosed to her the cosmic past,
The crypt-seed and the mystic origins,
115 The shadowy beginnings of world-fate:
A lamp of symbol lighting hidden truth
Imaged to her the world’s significance.
(S 2)
In the indeterminate formlessness of Self
Creation took its first mysterious steps,
120 It made the body’s shape a house of soul
And Matter learned to think and person grew;
She saw Space peopled with the seeds of life
And saw the human creature born in Time.
(S 3)
At first appeared a dim half-neutral tide
125 Of being emerging out of infinite Nought:
A consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast
And pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void.
(S 4)
All was the deed of a blind World-Energy:
Unconscious of her own exploits she worked,
130 Shaping a universe out of the Inane.
(S 5)
In fragmentary beings she grew aware:
A chaos of little sensibilities
Gathered round a small ego’s pin-point head;
In it a sentient creature found its poise,
135 It moved and lived a breathing, thinking whole.
(S 6)
On a dim ocean of subconscient life
A formless surface consciousness awoke:
A stream of thoughts and feelings came and went,
A foam of memories hardened and became
140 A bright crust of habitual sense and thought,
A seat of living personality
And recurrent habits mimicked permanence.
(S 7)
Mind nascent laboured out a mutable form,
It built a mobile house on shifting sands,
145 A floating isle upon a bottomless sea.
(S 8)
A conscious being was by this labour made;
It looked around it on its difficult field
In the green wonderful and perilous earth;
It hoped in a brief body to survive,
150 Relying on Matter’s false eternity.
(S 9)
It felt a godhead in its fragile house;
It saw blue heavens, dreamed immortality.
(S 10)
A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world,
Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,
155 An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts
Leaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.
(S 11)
In his floating house upon the sea of Time
The regent sits at work and never rests:
He is a puppet of the dance of Time;
160 He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call
Compels him with the thronging of life’s need
And the babel of the voices of the world.
(S 12)
This mind no silence knows nor dreamless sleep,
In the incessant circling of its steps
165 Thoughts tread for ever through the listening brain;
It toils like a machine and cannot stop.
(S 13)
Into the body’s many- storeyed rooms
Endless crowd down the dream-god’s messages.
(S 14)
All is a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir,
170 There is a tireless running to and fro,
A haste of movement and a ceaseless cry.
(S 15)
The hurried servant senses answer apace
To every knock upon the outer doors,
Bring in time’s visitors, report each call,
175 Admit the thousand queries and the calls
And the messages of communicating minds
And the heavy business of unnumbered lives
And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.
(S 16)
Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;
180 He mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams,
He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes,
His night with thin-air visions and dim forms
He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes
And only a moment spends in silent Self.
(S 17)
185 Adventuring into infinite mind-space
He unfolds his wings of thought in inner air,
Or travelling in imagination’s car
Crosses the globe, journeys beneath the stars,
To subtle worlds takes his ethereal course,
190 Visits the Gods on Life’s miraculous peaks,
Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.
(S 18)
This is the little surface of man’s life.
(S 19)
He is this and he is all the universe;
He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;
195 A whole mysterious world is locked within.
(S 20)
Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king
Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;
An epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,
He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:
200 A nameless god in an unapproachable fane,
In the secret adytum of his inmost soul
He guards the being’s covered mysteries
Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates
Or shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.
(S 21)
205 The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful
Casts into the argent purity of his soul
His splendour and his greatness and the light
Of self-creation in Time’s infinity
As into a sublimely mirroring glass.
(S 22)
210 Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God.
(S 23)
But all is there, even God’s opposites;
He is a little front of Nature’s works,
A thinking outline of a cryptic Force.
(S 24)
All she reveals in him that is in her,
215 Her glories walk in him and her darknesses.
(S 25)
Man’s house of life holds not the gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants of life’s ominous nether rooms,
A shadowy world’s stupendous denizens.
(S 26)
220 A careless guardian of his nature’s powers,
Man harbours dangerous forces in his house.
(S 27)
The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn
Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit
And the Beast grovels in his antre den:
225 Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.
(S 28)
Insurgent sometimes raises its huge head
A monstrous mystery lurking in life’s deeps,
The mystery of dark and fallen worlds,
The dread visages of the adversary Kings.
(S 29)
230 The dreadful powers held down within his depths
Become his masters or his ministers;
Enormous they invade his bodily house,
Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life.
(S 30)
Inferno surges into the human air
235 And touches all with a perverting breath..
(S 31)
Grey forces like a thin miasma creep,
Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,
Discolouring the walls of upper mind
In which he lives his fair and specious life,
240 And leave behind a stench of sin and death:
Not only rise in him perverse drifts of thought
And formidable formless influences,
But there come presences and awful shapes:
Tremendous forms and faces mount dim steps
245 And stare at times into his living-rooms,
Or called up for a moment’s passionate work
Lay a dire custom’s claim upon his heart:
Aroused from sleep, they can be bound no more.
(S 32)
Afflicting the daylight and alarming night,
250 Invading at will his outer tenement,
The stark gloom’s grisly dire inhabitants
Mounting into God’s light all light perturb.
(S 33)
All they have touched or seen they make their own,
In Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill,
255 Disrupt thought’s links and musing sequences,
Break through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry
Or they call the inhabitants of the abyss,
Invite the instincts to forbidden joys,
A laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth
260 And with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor.
(S 34)
Impotent to quell his terrible prisoners,
Appalled the householder helpless sits above,
Taken from him his house is his no more.
(S 35)
He is bound and forced, a victim of the play,
265 Or, allured, joys in the mad and mighty din
(S 36)
His nature’s dangerous forces have arisen
And hold at will a rebel’s holiday.
(S 37)
Aroused from the darkness where they crouched in the depths,
Prisoned from the sight, they can be held no more;
270 His nature’s impulses are now his lords.
(S 38)
Once quelled or wearing specious names and vests
Infernal elements, demon powers are there.
(S 39)
Man’s lower nature hides these awful guests.
(S 40)
Their vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.
(S 41)
275 An awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.
(S 42)
In house and house the huge uprising grows:
Hell’s companies are loosed to do their work,
Into the earth-ways they break out from all doors,
Invade with blood-lust and the will to slay
280 And fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world.
(S 43)
Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth;
The terrible Angel smites at every door:
An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
285 All is the prey of the destroying force;
Creation rocks and tremble top and base.
(S 44)
This evil Nature housed in human hearts,
A foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
290 Expel the householder, possess the house.
(S 45)
An opposite potency contradicting God,
A momentary Evil’s almightiness
Has straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts.
(S 46)
It imitates the Godhead it denies,
295 Puts on his figure and assumes his face.
(S 47)
A Manichean creator and destroyer,
This can abolish man, annul his world.
(S 48)
But there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.