(S 1) |
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A SAD destroying cadence the voice sank; |
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It seemed to lead the advancing march of Life |
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Into some still original Inane. |
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(S 2) |
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But Savitri answered to almighty Death: |
|
5 |
“O dark-browed sophist of the universe |
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Who veilst the Real with its own Idea, |
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Hiding with brute objects Nature’s living face, |
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Masking eternity with thy dance of death, |
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Thou hast woven the ignorant mind into a screen |
|
10 |
And made of Thought error’s purveyor and scribe, |
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And a false witness of mind’s servant sense. |
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(S 3) |
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An aesthete of the sorrow of the world, |
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Champion of a harsh and sad philosophy |
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Thou hast used words to shutter out the Light |
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15 |
And called in Truth to vindicate a lie. |
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(S 4) |
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A lying reality is falsehood’s crown |
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And a perverted truth her richest gem. |
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(S 5) |
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O Death, thou speakest truth but truth that slays, |
EoS |
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I answer to thee with the Truth that saves. |
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(S 6) |
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20 |
A traveller new-discovering himself, |
EoS |
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One made of Matter’s world his starting-point, |
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He made of Nothingness his living-room |
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And Night a process of the eternal light |
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And death a spur towards immortality. |
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(S 7) |
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25 |
God wrapped his head from sight in Matter’s cowl, |
EoS |
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His consciousness dived into inconscient depths, |
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All-Knowledge seemed a huge dark Nescience; |
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Infinity wore a boundless zero’s form. |
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(S 8) |
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His abysms of bliss became insensible deeps, |
|
30 |
Eternity a blank spiritual Vast. |
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(S 9) |
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Annulling an original nullity |
EoS |
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The Timeless took its ground in emptiness |
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And drew the figure of a universe, |
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That the spirit might adventure into Time |
|
35 |
And wrestle with adamant Necessity |
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And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage. |
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(S 10) |
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A spirit moved in black immensities |
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And built a Thought in ancient Nothingness; |
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A soul was lit in God’s tremendous Void, |
|
40 |
A secret labouring glow of nascent fire. |
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(S 11) |
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In Nihil’s gulf his mighty Puissance wrought; |
EoS |
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She swung her formless motion into shapes, |
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Made Matter the body of the Bodiless. |
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(S 12) |
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Infant and dim the eternal Mights awoke. |
EoS |
(S 13) |
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45 |
In inert Matter breathed a slumbering Life, |
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In a subconscient Life Mind lay asleep; |
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In waking Life it stretched its giant limbs |
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To shake from it the torpor of its drowse; |
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A senseless substance quivered into sense, |
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50 |
The world’s heart commenced to beat, its eyes to see, |
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In the crowded dumb vibrations of a brain |
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Thought fumbled in a ring to find itself, |
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Discovered speech and fed the new-born Word |
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That bridged with spans of light the world’s ignorance. |
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(S 14) |
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55 |
In waking Mind, the Thinker built his house. |
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(S 15) |
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A reasoning animal willed and planned and sought; |
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He stood erect among his brute compeers, |
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He built life new, measured the universe, |
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Opposed his fate and wrestled with unseen Powers, |
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60 |
Conquered and used the laws that rule the world, |
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And hoped to ride the heavens and reach the stars, |
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A master of his huge environment. |
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(S 16) |
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Now through Mind’s windows stares the demigod |
EoS |
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Hidden behind the curtains of man’s soul: |
|
65 |
He has seen the Unknown, looked on Truth’s veilless face; |
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A ray has touched him from the eternal sun; |
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Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths, |
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He stands awake in Supernature’s light |
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And sees a glory of arisen wings |
|
70 |
And sees the vast descending might of God. |
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(S 17) |
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“O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world |
EoS |
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Assailed by thee and of its road unsure, |
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Peopled by imperfect minds and ignorant lives, |
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And sayest God is not and all is vain. |
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(S 18) |
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75 |
How shall the child already be the man? |
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(S 19) |
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Because he is infant, shall he never grow? |
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(S 20) |
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Because he is ignorant, shall he never learn? |
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(S 21) |
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In a small fragile seed a great tree lurks, |
EoS |
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In a tiny gene a thinking being is shut; |
|
80 |
A little element in a little sperm, |
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It grows and is a conqueror and a sage. |
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(S 22) |
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Then wilt thou spew out, Death, God’s mystic truth, |
|
|
Deny the occult spiritual miracle? |
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(S 23) |
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Still wilt thou say there is no spirit, no God? |
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(S 24) |
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85 |
A mute material Nature wakes and sees; |
|
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She has invented speech, unveiled a will. |
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(S 25) |
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Something there waits beyond towards which she strives, |
|
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Something surrounds her into which she grows: |
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To uncover the spirit, to change back into God, |
|
90 |
To exceed herself is her transcendent task. |
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(S 26) |
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In God concealed the world began to be, |
EoS |
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Tardily it travels towards manifest God: |
|
|
Our imperfection towards perfection toils, |
|
|
The body is the chrysalis of a soul: |
|
95 |
The infinite holds the finite in its arms, |
|
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Time travels towards revealed eternity. |
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(S 27) |
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A miracle structure of the eternal Mage, |
EoS |
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Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes, |
|
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A scripture written out in cryptic signs, |
|
100 |
An occult document of the All-Wonderful’s art. |
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(S 28) |
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All here bears witness to his secret might, |
|
|
In all we feel his presence and his power. |
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(S 29) |
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A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun, |
|
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A glory is the gold and glimmering moon, |
|
105 |
A glory is his dream of purple sky. |
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(S 30) |
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A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars. |
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(S 31) |
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His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees, |
|
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His moments of beauty triumph in a flower; |
|
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The blue sea’s chant, the rivulet’s wandering voice |
|
110 |
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal’s harp. |
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(S 32) |
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This world is God fulfilled in outwardness. |
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(S 33) |
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His ways challenge our reason and our sense; |
|
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By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force, |
|
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By means we slight as small, obscure or base, |
|
115 |
A greatness founded upon little things, |
|
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He has built a world in the unknowing Void. |
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(S 34) |
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His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust; |
|
|
His marvels are built from insignificant things. |
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(S 35) |
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If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude, |
EoS |
120 |
If brutal masks are there and evil acts, |
|
|
They are incidents of his vast and varied plot, |
|
|
His great and dangerous drama’s needed steps; |
|
|
He makes with these and all his passion-play, |
|
|
A play and yet no play but the deep scheme |
|
125 |
Of a transcendent Wisdom finding ways |
|
|
To meet her Lord in the shadow and the Night: |
|
|
Above her is the vigil of the stars; |
|
|
Watched by a solitary Infinitude |
|
|
She embodies in dumb Matter the Divine, |
|
130 |
In symbol minds and lives the Absolute. |
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(S 36) |
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A miracle-monger her mechanical craft; |
|
|
Matter’s machine worked out the laws of thought, |
|
|
Life’s engines served the labour of a soul: |
|
|
The Mighty Mother her creation wrought, |
|
135 |
A huge caprice self-bound by iron laws, |
|
|
And shut God into an enigmatic world: |
|
|
She lulled the Omniscient into nescient sleep, |
|
|
Omnipotence on Inertia’s back she drove, |
|
|
Trod perfectly with divine unconscious steps |
|
140 |
The enormous circle of her wonder-works. |
|
(S 37) |
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|
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Immortality assured itself by death; |
EoS |
|
The Eternal’s face was seen through drifts of Time. |
|
(S 38) |
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|
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His knowledge he disguised as Ignorance, |
EoS |
|
His Good he sowed in Evil’s monstrous bed, |
|
145 |
Made error a door by which Truth could enter in, |
|
|
His plant of bliss watered with Sorrow’s tears. |
|
(S 39) |
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|
|
A thousand aspects point back to the One; |
EoS |
|
A dual Nature covered the Unique. |
|
(S 40) |
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|
|
In this meeting of the Eternal’s mingling masques, |
|
150 |
This tangle-dance of passionate contraries |
|
|
Locking like lovers in a forbidden embrace |
|
|
The quarrel of their lost identity, |
|
|
Through this wrestle and wrangle of the extremes of Power |
|
|
Earth’s million roads struggled towards deity. |
|
(S 41) |
|
|
155 |
All stumbled on behind a stumbling Guide, |
EoS |
|
Yet every stumble is a needed pace |
|
|
On unknown routes to an unknowable goal. |
|
(S 42) |
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|
|
All blundered and straggled towards the One Divine. |
|
(S 43) |
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|
|
As if transmuted by a titan spell |
|
160 |
The eternal Powers assumed a dubious face: |
|
|
Idols of an oblique divinity, |
|
|
They wore the heads of animal or troll, |
|
|
Assumed ears of the faun, the satyr’s hoof, |
|
|
Or harboured the demoniac in their gaze: |
|
165 |
A crooked maze they made of thinking mind, |
|
|
They suffered a metamorphosis of the heart, |
|
|
Admitting bacchant revellers from the Night |
|
|
Into its sanctuary of delights, |
|
|
As in a Dionysian masquerade. |
|
(S 44) |
|
|
170 |
On the highways, in the gardens of the world |
|
|
They wallowed oblivious of their divine parts, |
|
|
As drunkards of a dire Circean wine |
|
|
Or a child who sprawls and sports in Nature’s mire. |
|
(S 45) |
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|
|
Even wisdom, hewer of the roads of God, |
EoS |
175 |
Is a partner in the deep disastrous game: |
|
|
Lost is the pilgrim’s wallet and the scrip, |
|
|
She fails to read the map and watch the star. |
|
(S 46) |
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|
|
A poor self-righteous virtue is her stock |
|
|
And reason’s pragmatic grope or abstract sight, |
|
180 |
Or the technique of a brief hour’s success |
|
|
She teaches, an usher in utility’s school. |
|
(S 47) |
|
|
|
On the ocean surface of vast Consciousness |
|
|
Small thoughts in shoals are fished up into a net |
|
|
But the great truths escape her narrow cast; |
|
185 |
Guarded from vision by creation’s depths, |
|
|
Obscure they swim in blind enormous gulfs |
|
|
Safe from the little sounding leads of mind, |
|
|
Too far for the puny diver’s shallow plunge. |
|
(S 48) |
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|
|
Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes; |
|
190 |
It has no gaze on the deep heart of things. |
|
(S 49) |
|
|
|
Our knowledge walks leaning on Error’s staff, |
EoS |
|
A worshipper of false dogmas and false gods, |
|
|
Or fanatic of a fierce intolerant creed |
|
|
Or a seeker doubting every truth he finds, |
|
195 |
A sceptic facing Light with adamant No |
|
|
Or chilling the heart with dry ironic smile, |
|
|
Acynic stamping out the god in man; |
|
|
A darkness wallows in the paths of Time |
|
|
Or lifts its giant head to blot the stars; |
|
200 |
It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind |
|
|
And intercepts the oracles of the Sun. |
|
(S 50) |
|
|
|
Yet Light is there; it stands at Nature’s doors: |
|
|
It holds a torch to lead the traveller in. |
|
(S 51) |
|
|
|
It waits to be kindled in our secret cells; |
|
205 |
It is a star lighting an ignorant sea, |
|
|
A lamp upon our poop piercing the night. |
|
(S 52) |
|
|
|
As knowledge grows Light flames up from within: |
EoS |
|
It is a shining warrior in the mind, |
|
|
An eagle of dreams in the divining heart, |
|
210 |
An armour in the fight, a bow of God. |
|
(S 53) |
|
|
|
Then larger dawns arrive and Wisdom’s pomps |
EoS |
|
Cross through the being’s dim half-lighted fields; |
|
|
Philosophy climbs up Thought’s cloud-bank peaks |
|
|
And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers, |
|
215 |
Enormous djinns who serve a dwarf’s small needs, |
|
|
Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art |
|
|
And conquers her by her own captive force. |
|
(S 54) |
|
|
|
On heights unreached by mind’s most daring soar, |
|
|
Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time |
|
220 |
The soul draws back into its deathless Self; |
|
|
Man’s knowledge becomes God’s supernal Ray. |
|
(S 55) |
|
|
|
There is the mystic realm whence leaps the power |
|
|
Whose fire burns in the eyes of seer and sage; |
|
|
A lightning flash of visionary sight, |
|
225 |
It plays upon an inward verge of mind: |
|
|
Thought silenced gazes into a brilliant Void. |
|
(S 56) |
|
|
|
A voice comes down from mystic unseen peaks: |
|
|
A cry of splendour from a mouth of storm, |
|
|
It is the voice that speaks to night’s profound, |
|
230 |
It is the thunder and the flaming call. |
|
(S 57) |
|
|
|
Above the planes that climb from nescient earth, |
|
|
A hand is lifted towards the Invisible’s realm, |
|
|
Beyond the superconscient’s blinding line |
|
|
And plucks away the screens of the Unknown; |
|
235 |
A spirit within looks into the Eternal’s eyes. |
|
(S 58) |
|
|
|
It hears the Word to which our hearts were deaf, |
EoS |
|
It sees through the blaze in which our thoughts grew blind; |
|
|
It drinks from the naked breasts of glorious Truth, |
|
|
It learns the secrets of eternity. |
|
(S 59) |
|
|
240 |
Thus all was plunged into the riddling Night, |
|
|
Thus all is raised to meet a dazzling Sun. |
|
(S 60) |
|
|
|
O Death, this is the mystery of thy reign. |
|
(S 61) |
|
|
|
In earth’s anomalous and magic field |
|
|
Carried in its aimless journey by the sun |
|
245 |
Mid the forced marches of the great dumb stars, |
|
|
A darkness occupied the fields of God, |
|
|
And Matter’s world was governed by thy shape. |
|
(S 62) |
|
|
|
Thy mask has covered the Eternal’s face, |
EoS |
|
The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep. |
|
(S 63) |
|
|
250 |
Abandoned in the Vast she slumbered on: |
|
|
An evil transmutation overtook |
|
|
Her members till she knew herself no more. |
|
(S 64) |
|
|
|
Only through her creative slumber flit |
|
|
Frail memories of the joy and beauty meant |
|
255 |
Under the sky’s blue laugh mid green-scarfed trees |
|
|
And happy squanderings of scents and hues, |
|
|
In the field of the golden promenade of the sun |
|
|
And the vigil of the dream-light of the stars, |
|
|
Amid high meditating heads of hills, |
|
260 |
On the bosom of voluptuous rain-kissed earth |
|
|
And by the sapphire tumblings of the sea. |
|
(S 65) |
|
|
|
But now the primal innocence is lost |
|
|
And Death and Ignorance govern the mortal world |
|
|
And Nature’s visage wears a greyer hue. |
|
(S 66) |
|
|
265 |
Earth still has kept her early charm and grace, |
EoS |
|
The grandeur and the beauty still are hers, |
|
|
But veiled is the divine Inhabitant. |
|
(S 67) |
|
|
|
The souls of men have wandered from the Light |
|
|
And the great Mother turns away her face. |
|
(S 68) |
|
|
270 |
The eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed |
|
|
And sorrow’s touch has found her in her dreams. |
|
(S 69) |
|
|
|
As she turns and tosses on her bed of Void, |
|
|
Because she cannot wake and find herself |
|
|
And cannot build again her perfect shape, |
|
275 |
Oblivious of her nature and her state, |
|
|
Forgetting her instinct of felicity, |
|
|
Forgetting to create a world of joy, |
|
|
She weeps and makes her creatures’ eyes to weep; |
|
|
Testing with sorrow’s edge her children’s breasts, |
|
280 |
She spends on life’s vain waste of hope and toil |
|
|
The poignant luxury of grief and tears. |
|
(S 70) |
|
|
|
In the nightmare change of her half-conscious dream, |
|
|
Tortured herself and torturing by her touch, |
|
|
She comes to our hearts and bodies and our lives |
|
285 |
Wearing a hard and cruel mask of pain. |
|
(S 71) |
|
|
|
Our nature twisted by the abortive birth |
EoS |
|
Returns wry answers to life’s questioning shocks, |
|
|
An acrid relish finds in the world’s pangs, |
|
|
Drinks the sharp wine of grief’s perversity. |
|
(S 72) |
|
|
290 |
A curse is laid on the pure joy of life: |
EoS |
|
Delight, God’s sweetest sign and Beauty’s twin, |
|
|
Dreaded by aspiring saint and austere sage, |
|
|
Is shunned, a dangerous and ambiguous cheat, |
|
|
A specious trick of an infernal Power |
|
295 |
It tempts the soul to its self-hurt and fall. |
|
(S 73) |
|
|
|
A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit, |
EoS |
|
Or red drug in the market-place of Death, |
|
|
And sin the child of Nature’s ecstasy. |
|
(S 74) |
|
|
|
Yet every creature hunts for happiness, |
|
300 |
Buys with harsh pangs or tears by violence |
|
|
From the dull breast of the inanimate globe |
|
|
Some fragment or some broken shard of bliss. |
|
(S 75) |
|
|
|
Even joy itself becomes a poisonous draught; |
EoS |
|
Its hunger is made a dreadful hook of Fate. |
|
(S 76) |
|
|
305 |
All means are held good to catch a single beam, |
|
|
Eternity sacrificed for a moment’s bliss: |
|
|
Yet for joy and not for sorrow earth was made |
|
|
And not as a dream in endless suffering Time. |
|
(S 77) |
|
|
|
Although God made the world for his delight, |
EoS |
310 |
An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will |
|
|
And Death’s deep falsity has mastered Life. |
|
(S 78) |
|
|
|
All grew a play of Chance simulating Fate. |
|