(S 1)
Yet was this only a provisional scheme,
A false appearance sketched by limiting sense,
Mind’s insufficient self-discovery,
605 An early attempt, a first experiment.
(S 2)
This was a toy to amuse the infant earth;
But knowledge ends not in these surface powers
That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance
And dare not look into the dangerous depths
610 Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.
(S 3)
There is a deeper seeing from within
And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,
A greater vision meets us on the heights
In the luminous wideness of the spirit’s gaze.
(S 4)
615 At last there wakes in us a witness Soul
That looks at truths unseen and scans the Unknown;
Then all assumes a new and marvellous face:
The world quivers with a God-light at its core,
In Time’s deep heart high purposes move and live,
620 Life’s borders crumble and join infinity.
(S 5)
This broad, confused, yet rigid scheme becomes
A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,
A game, a work ambiguously divine.
(S 6)
Our seekings are short-lived experiments
625 Made by a wordless and inscrutable Power
Testing its issues from inconscient Night
To meet its luminous self of Truth and Bliss.
(S 7)
It peers at the Real through the apparent form;
It labours in our mortal mind and sense;
630 Amid the figures of the Ignorance,
In the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,
It seeks the truth to which all figures point;
It looks for the source of Light with vision’s lamp;
It works to find the Doer of all works,
635 The unfelt Self within who is the guide,
The unknown Self above who is the goal.
(S 8)
All is not here a blinded Nature’s task:
A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,
A Witness sanctioning her will and works,
640 An Eye unseen in the unseeing vast;
There is an Influence from a Light above,
There are thoughts remote and sealed eternities;
A mystic motive drives the stars and suns.
(S 9)
In this passage from a deaf unknowing Force
645 To struggling consciousness and transient breath
A mighty Supernature waits on Time.Something above or beyond Nature (LIM)
(S 10)
The world is other than we now think and see,
Our lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed;
Our minds are starters in the race to God,
650 Our souls deputed selves of the Supreme.
(S 11)
Across the cosmic field through narrow lanes
Asking a scanty dole from Fortune’s hands
And garbed in beggar’s robes there walks the One.
(S 12)
Even in the theatre of these small lives
655 Behind the act a secret sweetness breathes,
An urge of miniature divinity.
(S 13)
A mystic passion from the wells of God
Flows through the guarded spaces of the soul;
A force that helps supports the suffering earth,
660 An unseen nearness and a hidden joy.
(S 14)
There are muffled throbs of laughter’s undertones,
The murmur of an occult happiness,
An exultation in the depths of sleep,
A heart of bliss within a world of pain.
(S 15)
665 An Infant nursed on Nature’s covert breast,
An Infant playing in the magic woods,
Fluting to rapture by the spirit’s streams,
Awaits the hour when we shall turn to his call.
(S 16)
In this investiture of fleshly life
670 A soul that is a spark of God survives
And sometimes it breaks through the sordid screen
And kindles a fire that makes us half-divine.
(S 17)
In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power
That sees the unseen and plans eternity,
675 Our smallest parts have room for deepest needs;
There too the golden Messengers can come:
A door is cut in the mud wall of self;
Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads
Angels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,
680 And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream
The makers of the image of deity live.
(S 18)
Pity is there and fire-winged sacrifice,
And flashes of sympathy and tenderness
Cast heaven-lights from the heart’s secluded shrine.
(S 19)
685 A work is done in the deep silences;
A glory and wonder of spiritual sense,
A laughter in beauty’s everlasting space
Transforming world-experience into joy,
Inhabit the mystery of the untouched gulfs;
690 Lulled by Time’s beats eternity sleeps in us.
(S 20)
In the sealed hermetic heart, the happy core,
Unmoved behind this outer shape of death
The eternal Entity prepares withinEntity
Its matter of divine felicity,
695 Its reign of heavenly phenomenon.
(S 21)
Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance
A foresight comes of some immense release,
Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands.
(S 22)
Each part in us desires its absolute.
(S 23)
700 Our thoughts covet the everlasting Light,
Our strength derives from an omnipotent Force,
And since from a veiled God-joy the worlds were made
And since eternal Beauty asks for form
Even here where all is made of being’s dust,
705 Our hearts are captured by ensnaring shapes,
Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.
(S 24)
Our error crucifies Reality
To force its birth and divine body here,
Compelling, incarnate in a human form
710 And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,
Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance,
Its saviour light the inconscient universe.
(S 25)
And when that greater Self comes sea-like down
To fill this image of our transience,
715 All shall be captured by delight, transformed:
In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll
Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light
Other than this hard limited human day,
The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,
720 Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis
(S 26)
This little being of Time, this shadow soul,
This living dwarf-figurehead of darkened spirit
Out of its traffic in petty dreams shall rise.
(S 27)
Its shape of person and its ego-face
725 Divested of this mortal travesty,
Like a clay troll kneaded into a god
New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,
It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force
And, flaming with the paradisal touch
730 In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,
In the red passion of its infinite change,
Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.
(S 28)
As if reversing a deformation’s spell,
Released from the black magic of the Night,
735 Renouncing servitude to the dim Abyss,
It shall learn at last who lived within unseen,
And seized with marvel in the adoring heart
To the enthroned Child-Godhead kneel aware,
Trembling with beauty and delight and love.
(S 29)
740 But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve
Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.
(S 30)
The soul must soar sovereign above the form
And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;
Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,
745 Surprise the animal with the occult god.
(S 31)
Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,
Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,
We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,
Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,
750 Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray
And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.