Part 1 (Books I – III)
Book 1: The Book of Beginnings
Canto One – The Symbol Dawn
(S 1) | ||
IT WAS the hour before the Gods awake. | EoS | |
(S 2) | ||
Across the path of the divine Event | EoS | |
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
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In her unlit temple of eternity, | ||
5 |
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge.
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(S 3) | ||
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
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EoS | |
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
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The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
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A fathomless zero occupied the world.
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(S 4) | ||
10 |
A power of fallen boundless self awake
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EoS |
Between the first and the last Nothingness, | ||
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
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Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
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And the tardy process of mortality
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15 |
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.
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(S 5) | ||
As in a dark beginning of all things, | ||
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
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Repeating for ever the unconscious act, | ||
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will, | ||
20 | Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force | |
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
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And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
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(S 6) | ||
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
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Its formless stupor without mind or life,
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25 |
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
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Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams, | ||
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
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Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. | ||
(S 7) | ||
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
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(S 8) | ||
30 |
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
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EoS |
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea | ||
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
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Something that wished but knew not how to be, | ||
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
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(S 9) | ||
35 |
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
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Gave room for an old tired want unfilled, | ||
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave | ||
To raise its head and look for absent light, | ||
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
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40 |
Like one who searches for a bygone self
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And only meets the corpse of his desire.
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(S 10) | ||
It was as though even in this Nought’s profound,
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Even in this ultimate dissolution’s core, | ||
There lurked an unremembering entity,
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45 |
Survivor of a slain and buried past
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Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
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Reviving in another frustrate world.
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(S 11) | ||
An unshaped consciousness desired light | EoS | |
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change. | ||
(S 12) | ||
50 | As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek | |
Reminded of the endless need in things | ||
The heedless Mother of the universe,
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An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
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(S 13) | ||
Insensibly somewhere a breach began:
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55 |
A long lone line of hesitating hue
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Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart | ||
Troubled the far rim of life’s obscure sleep.
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(S 14) | ||
Arrived from the other side of boundlessness | ||
An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
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60 |
A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
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It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
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The torpor of a sick and weary world,
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To seek for a spirit sole and desolate | ||
Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss. | ||
(S 15) | ||
65 | Intervening in a mindless universe, | |
Its message crept through the reluctant hush
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Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy | ||
And, conquering Nature’s disillusioned breast, | ||
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
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(S 16) | ||
70 |
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
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A sense was born within the darkness’ depths, | ||
A memory quivered in the heart of Time
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As if a soul long dead were moved to live: | ||
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
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75 |
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
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And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt | ||
And old experience laboured out once more. | ||
(S 17) | ||
All can be done if the god-touch is there. | EoS | |
(S 18) | ||
A hope stole in that hardly dared to be | ||
80 |
Amid the Night’s forlorn indifference.
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(S 19) | ||
As if solicited in an alien world | ||
With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,
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Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,
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An errant marvel with no place to live,
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85 |
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
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A slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal. | ||
(S 20) | ||
The persistent thrill of a transfigure touch | ||
Persuaded the inert black quietude
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And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God. | ||
(S 21) | ||
90 |
A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
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That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,
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Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
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A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.
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(S 22) | ||
One lucent corner windowing hidden things | ||
95 | Forced the world’s blind immensity to sight. | |
(S 23) | ||
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak | EoS | |
From the reclining body of a god.
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(S 24) | ||
Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first | ❊ | |
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
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100 | Outpoured the revelation and the flame. | |
(S 25) | ||
The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
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(S 26) | ||
A glamour from unreached transcendences | EoS | |
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
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A message from the unknown immortal Light | ||
105 |
ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,
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Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues | ||
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours. | ||
(S 27) | ||
An instant’s visitor the godhead shone.
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EoS | |
(S 28) | ||
On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood | ||
110 |
And bent over earth’s pondering forehead curve.
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(S 29) | ||
Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
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EoS | |
In colour’s hieroglyphs of mystic sense, | ||
It wrote the lines of a significant myth | ||
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns, | ||
115 |
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.
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(S 30) | ||
Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed
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EoS | |
Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;
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A lonely splendour from the invisible goal | ||
Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.
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(S 31) | ||
120 | Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts; | |
Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm | ||
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven; | ||
A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near. | ||
(S 32) | ||
Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
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EoS | |
125 | The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths | |
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
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And saw the spaces ready for her feet. | ||
(S 33) | ||
Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun, | EoS | |
Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work. | ||
(S 34) | ||
130 |
Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close:
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The waking ear of Nature heard her steps | ||
And wideness turned to her its limitless eye, | ||
And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
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Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds. | ||
(S 35) | ||
135 | All grew a consecration and a rite. | EoS |
(S 36) | ||
Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven; | ||
The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind | ||
Arose and failed upon the altar hills; | ||
The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. | ||
(S 37) | ||
140 |
Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
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On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth, | ||
Here where one knows not even the step in front | ||
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt, | ||
On this anguished and precarious field of toil | ||
145 | Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze, | |
Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
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Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray. | ||
(S 38) | ||
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam | EoS | |
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes; | ||
150 |
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
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Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range. | ||
(S 39) | ||
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace, | ||
The worship of a Presence and a Power | ||
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts, | ||
155 |
The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
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(S 40) | ||
Only a little the god-light can stay: | ||
Spiritual beauty illumining human sight | ||
Lines with its passion and mystery Matter’s mask | ||
And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
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(S 41) | ||
160 |
As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,
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EoS |
Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness, | ||
A spark of deity lost in Matter’s crypt | ||
Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes, | ||
That transitory glow of magic fire | ||
165 | So now dissolved in bright accustomed air. | |
(S 42) | ||
The message ceased and waned the messenger. | ||
(S 43) | ||
The single Call, the uncompanioned Power, | ||
Drew back into some far-off secret world | ||
The hue and marvel of the supernal beam:
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170 | She looked no more on our mortality. | |
(S 44) | ||
The excess of beauty natural to god-kind | ||
Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes; | ||
Too mystic-real for space-tenancy | ||
Her body of glory was expunged from heaven: | ||
175 | The rarity and wonder lived no more. | |
There was the common light of earthly day. | ||
(S 45) | ||
Affranchised from the respite of fatigue
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Once more the rumour of the speed of Life
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Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest. | ||
(S 46) | ||
180 | All sprang to their unvarying daily acts; | EoS |
The thousand peoples of the soil and tree | ||
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge, | ||
And, leader here with his uncertain mind, | ||
Alone who stares at the future’s covered face, | ||
185 | Man lifted up the burden of his fate. | |
(S 1) |