(S 1)
All there was soul or made of sheer soul-stuff;
A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.
(S 2)
All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
105 Seized on all things by a moved identity,
A sympathy of self with other selves,
The touch of consciousness on consciousness
And being’s look on being with inmost gaze
And heart laid bare to heart without walls of speech
110 And the unanimity of seeing minds
In myriad forms luminous with the one God.
(S 3)
Life was not there, but an impassioned force,
Finer than fineness, deeper than the deeps,
Felt as a subtle and spiritual power,
115 A quivering out from soul to answering soul,
A mystic movement, a close influence,
A free and happy and intense approach
Of being to being with no screen or check,
Without which life and love could never have been.
(S 4)
120 Body was not there, for bodies were needed not,
The soul itself was its own deathless form
And met at once the touch of other souls
Close, blissful, concrete, wonderfully true.
(S 5)
As when one walks in sleep through luminous dreams
125 And, conscious, knows the truth their figures mean,
Here where reality was its own dream,
He knew things by their soul and not their shape:
As those who have lived long made one in love
Need word nor sign for heart’s reply to heart,
130 He met and communed without bar of speech
With beings unveiled by a material frame.
(S 6)
There was a strange spiritual scenery,
A loveliness of lakes and streams and hills,
A flow, a fixity in a soul-space,
135 And plains and valleys, stretches of soul-joy,
And gardens that were flower-tracts of the spirit,
Its meditations of tinged reverie.
(S 7)
Air was the breath of a pure infinite.
(S 8)
A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze
140 As if the scent and hue of all sweet flowers
Had mingled to copy heaven’s atmosphere.
(S 9)
Appealing to the soul and not the eye
Beauty lived there at home in her own house,
There all was beautiful by its own right
145 And needed not the splendour of a robe.
(S 10)
All objects were like bodies of the Gods,
A spirit symbol environing a soul,
For world and self were one reality.