(S 1)
360 In that fair subtle realm behind our own
The form is all, and physical gods are kings.
(S 2)
The inspiring Light plays in fine boundaries;
A faultless beauty comes by Nature’s grace;
There liberty is perfection’s guarantee:
365 Although the absolute Image lacks, the Word
Incarnate, the sheer spiritual ecstasy,
All is a miracle of symmetric charm,
A fantasy of perfect line and rule.
(S 3)
There all feel satisfied in themselves and whole,
370 A rich completeness is by limit made,
Marvel in an utter littleness abounds,
An intricate rapture riots in a small space:
Each rhythm is kin to its environment,
Each line is perfect and inevitable,
375 Each object faultlessly built for charm and use.
(S 4)
All is enamoured of its own delight.
(S 5)
Intact it lives of its perfection sure
In a heaven-pleased self-glad immunity;
Content to be, it has need of nothing more.
(S 6)
380 Here was not futile effort’s broken heart: EoS
Exempt from the ordeal and the test,
Empty of opposition and of pain,
It was a world that could not fear nor grieve.
(S 7)
It had no grace of error or defeat,
385 It had no room for fault, no power to fail.
(S 8)
Out of some packed self-bliss it drew at once
Its form-discoveries of the mute Idea
And the miracle of its rhythmic thoughts and acts,
Its clear technique of firm and rounded lives,
390 Its gracious people of inanimate shapes
And glory of breathing bodies like our own.
(S 9)
Amazed, his senses ravished with delight,
He moved in a divine, yet kindred world
Admiring marvellous forms so near to ours
395 Yet perfect like the playthings of a god,
Deathless in the aspect of mortality.
(S 10)
In their narrow and exclusive absolutes EoS
The finite’s ranked supremacies throned abide;
It dreams not ever of what might have been;
400 Only in boundaries can this absolute live.
(S 11)
In a supremeness bound to its own plan
Where all was finished and no widths were left,
No space for shadows of the immeasurable,
No room for the incalculable’s surprise,
405 A captive of its own beauty and ecstasy,
In a magic circle wrought the enchanted Might.
(S 12)
The spirit stood back effaced behind its frame. EoS
(S 13)
Admired for the bright finality of its lines
A blue horizon limited the soul;
410 Thought moved in luminous facilities,
The outer ideal’s shallows its swim-range:
Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
With the small happiness of the body’s acts.
(S 14)
Assigned as Force to a bound corner-Mind, EoS
415 Attached to the safe paucity of her room,
She did her little works and played and slept
And thought not of a greater work undone.
(S 15)
Forgetful of her violent vast desires, EoS
Forgetful of the heights to which she rose,
420 Her walk was fixed within a radiant groove.
(S 16)
The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.
(S 17)
The spaces’ call reached not her charmed abode,
425 She had no wings for wide and dangerous flight,
She faced no peril of sky or of abyss,
She knew no vistas and no mighty dreams,
No yearning for her lost infinitudes.
(S 18)
A perfect picture in a perfect frame,
430 This faery artistry could not keep his will:
Only a moment’s fine release it gave;
A careless hour was spent in a slight bliss.
(S 19)
Our spirit tires of being’s surfaces, EoS
Transcended is the splendour of the form;
435 It turns to hidden powers and deeper states.
(S 20)
So now he looked beyond for greater light.
(S 21)
His soul’s peak-climb abandoning in its rear EoS
This brilliant courtyard of the House of Days,
He left that fine material Paradise.
(S 22)
440 His destiny lay beyond in larger Space.