(S 1)
But judged not so his spirit’s wakened eye. EoS
(S 2)
As shines a solitary witness star
That burns apart, Light’s lonely sentinel,
In the drift and teeming of a mindless Night,
205 A single thinker in an aimless world
Awaiting some tremendous dawn of God,
He saw the purpose in the works of Time.
(S 3)
Even in that aimlessness a work was done
Pregnant with magic will and change divine.
(S 4)
210 The first writhings of the cosmic serpent Force
Uncoiled from the mystic ring of Matter’s trance;
It raised its head in the warm air of life.
(S 5)
It could not cast off yet Night’s stiffening sleep
Or wear as yet mind’s wonder- flecks and streaks,
215 Put on its jewelled hood the crown of soul
Or stand erect in the blaze of spirit’s sun.
(S 6)
As yet were only seen foulness and force,
The secret crawl of consciousness to light
Through a fertile slime of lust and battening sense,
220 Beneath the body’s crust of thickened self
A tardy fervent working in the dark,
The turbid yeast of Nature’s passionate change,
Ferment of the soul’s creation out of mire.
(S 7)
A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,
225 A fallen ignorance in its covert night
Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,
A camouflage of the Inconscient’s need
To release the glory of God in Nature’s mud.
(S 8)
His sight, spiritual in embodying orbs,
230 Could pierce through the grey phosphorescent haze
And scan the secrets of the shifting flux
That animates these mute and solid cells
And leads the thought and longing of the flesh
And the keen lust and hunger of its will.
(S 9)
235 This too he tracked along its hidden stream EoS
And traced its acts to a miraculous fount.
(S 10)
A mystic Presence none can probe nor rule,
Creator of this game of ray and shade
In this sweet and bitter paradoxical life,
240 Asks from the body the soul’s intimacies
And by the swift vibration of a nerve
Links its mechanic throbs to light and love.
(S 11)
It summons the spirit’s sleeping memories
Up from subconscient depths beneath Time’s foam;
245 Oblivious of their flame of happy truth,
Arriving with heavy eyes that hardly see,
They come disguised as feelings and desires,
Like weeds upon the surface float awhile
And rise and sink on a somnambulist tide.
(S 12)
250 Impure, degraded though her motions are, EoS
Always a heaven-truth broods in life’s deeps;
In her obscurest members burns that fire.
(S 13)
A touch of God’s rapture in creation’s acts,
A lost remembrance of felicity
255 Lurks still in the dumb roots of death and birth,
The world’s senseless beauty mirrors God’s delight.
(S 14)
That rapture’s smile is secret everywhere; f[usion_modal_text_link name=”EoSB02C04L257″ class=”” id=””]EoS[/fusion_modal_text_link]
It flows in the wind’s breath, in the tree’s sap ,
Its hued magnificence blooms in leaves and flowers.
(S 15)
260 When life broke through its half-drowse in the plant
That feels and suffers but cannot move or cry,
In beast and in winged bird and thinking man
It made of the heart’s rhythm its music’s beat;
It forced the unconscious tissues to awake
265 And ask for happiness and earn the pang
And thrill with pleasure and laughter of brief delight,
And quiver with pain and crave for ecstasy.
(S 16)
Imperative, voiceless, ill-understood, EoS
Too far from light, too close to being’s core,
270 Born strangely in Time from the eternal Bliss,
It presses on heart’s core and vibrant nerve;
Its sharp self-seeking tears our consciousness;
Our pain and pleasure have that sting for cause:
Instinct with it, but blind to its true joy
275 The soul’s desire leaps out towards passing things.
(S 17)
All Nature’s longing drive none can resist,
Comes surging through the blood and quickened sense;
An ecstasy of the infinite is her cause.
(S 18)
It turns in us to finite loves and lusts, EoS
280 The will to conquer and have, to seize and keep,
To enlarge life’s room and scope and pleasure’s range,
To battle and overcome and make one’s own,
The hope to mix one’s joy with others’ joy,
A yearning to possess and be possessed,
285 To enjoy and be enjoyed, to feel, to live.
(S 19)
Here was its early brief attempt to be,
Its rapid end of momentary delight
Whose stamp of failure haunts all ignorant life.
(S 20)
Inflicting still its habit on the cells
290 The phantom of a dark and evil start
Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do.
(S 21)
Although on earth are firm established lives,
A working of habit or a sense of law,
A steady repetition in the flux,
295 Yet are its roots of will ever the same;
These passions are the stuff of which we are made.
(S 22)
This was the first cry of the awaking world. EoS
(S 23)
It clings around us still and clamps the god.
(S 24)
Even when reason is born and soul takes form,
300 In beast and reptile and in thinking man
It lasts and is the fount of all their life.
(S 25)
This too was needed that breath and living might be.
(S 26)
The spirit in a finite ignorant world EoS
Must rescue so its prisoned consciousness
305 Forced out in little jets at quivering points
From the Inconscient’s sealed infinitude.
(S 27)
Then slowly it gathers mass, looks up at Light.
(S 28)
This Nature lives tied to her origin,
A clutch of nether force is on her still;
310 Out of unconscious depths her instincts leap;
A neighbour is her life to insentient Nought.
(S 29)
Under this law an ignorant world was made.
(S 30)
In the enigma of the darkened Vasts, EoS
In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite
315 When all was plunged in the negating Void,
Non-Being’s night could never have been saved
If Being had not plunged into the dark
Carrying with it its triple mystic cross. ❊
(S 31)
Invoking in world-time the timeless truth,
320 Bliss changed to sorrow, knowledge made ignorant,
God’s force turned into a child’s helplessness
Can bring down heaven by their sacrifice.
(S 32)
A contradiction founds the base of life: EoS
The eternal, the divine Reality
325 Has faced itself with its own contraries;
Being became the Void and Conscious-Force
Nescience and walk of a blind Energy
And Ecstasy took the figure of world-pain.
(S 33)
In a mysterious dispensation’s law
330 A Wisdom that prepares its far-off ends
Planned so to start her slow aeonic game.
(S 34)
A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp
Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul,
A game of hide-and-seek in twilit rooms,
335 A play of love and hate and fear and hope
Continues in the nursery of mind
Its hard and heavy romp of self-born twins.
(S 35)
At last the struggling Energy can emerge EoS
And meet the voiceless Being in wider fields;
340 Then can they see and speak and, breast to breast,
In a larger consciousness, a clearer light,
The Two embrace and strive and each know each
Regarding closer now the playmate’s face.
(S 36)
Even in these formless coilings he could feel
345 Matter’s response to an infant stir of soul.
(S 37)
In Nature he saw the mighty Spirit concealed, EoS
Watched the weak birth of a tremendous Force,
Pursued the riddle of Godhead’s tentative pace,
Heard the faint rhythms of a great unborn Muse.