(S 1)
A LAND of mountains and wide sun-beat plains
And giant rivers pacing to vast seas,
A field of creation and spiritual hush,
Silence swallowing life’s acts into the deeps,
5 Of thought’s transcendent climb and heavenward leap,
A brooding world of reverie and trance,
Filled with the mightiest works of God and man,
Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine
And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home,
10 Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.
(S 2)
Over her watched millennial influences
And the deep godheads of a grandiose past
Looked on her and saw the future’s godheads come
As if this magnet drew their powers unseen.
(S 3)
15 Earth’s brooding wisdom spoke to her still breast;
Mounting from mind’s last peaks to mate with gods,
Making earth’s brilliant thoughts a springing-board
To dive into the cosmic vastnesses,
The knowledge of the thinker and the seer
20 Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable,
Opened the enormous doors of the unknown,
Rent man’s horizons into infinity.
(S 4)
A shoreless sweep was lent to the mortal’s acts,
And art and beauty sprang from the human depths;
25 Nature and soul vied in nobility.
(S 5)
Ethics the human keyed to imitate heaven;
The harmony of a rich culture’s tones
Refined the sense and magnified its reach
To hear the unheard and glimpse the invisible
30 And taught the soul to soar beyond things known,
Inspiring life to greaten and break its bounds,
Aspiring to the Immortals’ unseen world.
(S 6)
Leaving earth’s safety daring wings of Mind
Bore her above the trodden fields of thought
35 Crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond
To live on eagle heights near to the Sun.
(S 7)
There Wisdom sits on her eternal throne.
(S 8)
All her life’s turns led her to symbol doors
Admitting to secret Powers that were her kin;
40 Adept of truth, initiate of bliss,
A mystic acolyte trained in Nature’s school,
Aware of the marvel of created things
She laid the secrecies of her heart’s deep muse
Upon the altar of the Wonderful;
45 Her hours were a ritual in a timeless fane;
Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.
(S 9)
Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres
The word was used as a hieratic means
For the release of the imprisoned spirit
50 Into communion with its comrade gods.
(S 10)
Or it helped to beat out new expressive forms
Of that which labours in the heart of life,
Some immemorial Soul in men and things,
Seeker of the unknown and the unborn
55 Carrying a light from the Ineffable
To rend the veil of the last mysteries.
(S 11)
Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
Or on foundations broad as cosmic Space
Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman heights.
(S 12)
60 Overpassing lines that please the outward eyes
But hide the sight of that which lives within
Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision’s motionless verge,
Revealed a figure of the invisible,
65 Unveiled all Nature’s meaning in a form,
Or caught into a body the Divine.
(S 13)
The architecture of the Infinite
Discovered here its inward-musing shapes
Captured into wide breadths of soaring stone:
70 Music brought down celestial yearnings, song
Held the merged heart absorbed in rapturous depths,
Linking the human with the cosmic cry;
The world-interpreting movements of the dance
Moulded idea and mood to a rhythmic sway
75 And posture; crafts minute in subtle lines
Eternised a swift moment’s memory
Or showed in a carving’s sweep, a cup’s design
The underlying patterns of the unseen:
Poems in largeness cast like moving worlds
80 And metres surging with the ocean’s voice
Translated by grandeurs locked in Nature’s heart
But thrown now into a crowded glory of speech
The beauty and sublimity of her forms,
The passion of her moments and her moods
85 Lifting the human word nearer to the god’s.
(S 14)
Man’s eyes could look into the inner realms;
His scrutiny discovered number’s law
And organised the motions of the stars,
Mapped out the visible fashioning of the world,
90 Questioned the process of his thoughts or made
A theorised diagram of mind and life.
(S 15)
These things she took in as her nature’s food,
But these alone could fill not her wide Self:
A human seeking limited by its gains,
95 To her they seemed the great and early steps
Hazardous of a young discovering spirit
Which saw not yet by its own native light;
It tapped the universe with testing knocks
Or stretched to find truth mind’s divining rod;
100 There was a growing out to numberless sides,
But not the widest seeing of the soul,
Not yet the vast direct immediate touch,
Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods.
(S 16)
A boundless knowledge greater than man’s thought,
105 A happiness too high for heart and sense
Locked in the world and yearning for release
She felt in her; waiting as yet for form,
It asked for objects around which to grow
And natures strong to bear without recoil
110 The splendour of her native royalty,
Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss,
Her might to possess and her vast power to love:
Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer heaven,
The soul saw beyond heaven’s limiting boundaries,
115 Met a great light from the Unknowable
And dreamed of a transcendent action’s sphere.
(S 17)
Aware of the universal Self in all
She turned to living hearts and human forms,
Her soul’s reflections, complements, counterparts,
120 The close outlying portions of her being
Divided from her by walls of body and mind
Yet to her spirit bound by ties divine.
(S 18)
Overcoming invisible hedge and masked defence
And the loneliness that separates soul from soul,
125 She wished to make all one immense embrace
That she might house in it all living things
Raised into a splendid point of seeing light
Out of division’s dense inconscient cleft,
And make them one with God and world and her.
(S 19)
130 Only a few responded to her call:
Still fewer felt the screened divinity
And strove to mate its godhead with their own,
Approaching with some kinship to her heights.
(S 20)
Uplifted towards luminous secrecies
135
They leaped to find her in a moment’s flash,
Glimpsing a light in a celestial vast,
But could not keep the vision and the power
And fell back to life’s dull ordinary tone.
(S 21)
140 A mind daring heavenly experiment,
Growing towards some largeness they felt near,
Testing the unknown’s bound with eager touch
They still were prisoned by their human grain:
They could not keep up with her tireless step;
145 Too small and eager for her large-paced will,
Too narrow to look with the unborn Infinite’s gaze
Their nature weary grew of things too great.
(S 22)
For even the close partners of her thoughts
Who could have walked the nearest to her ray,
150 Worshipped the power and light they felt in her
But could not match the measure of her soul.
(S 23)
A friend and yet too great wholly to know,
She walked in their front towards a greater light,
Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls,
155 One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.
(S 24)
Admiring and amazed they saw her stride
Attempting with a godlike rush and leap
Heights for their human stature too remote
Or with a slow great many-sided toil
160 Pushing towards aims they hardly could conceive;
Yet forced to be the satellites of her sun
They moved unable to forego her light,
Desiring they clutched at her with outstretched hands
Or followed stumbling in the paths she made.
(S 25)
165 Or longing with their self of life and flesh
They clung to her for heart’s nourishment and support:
The rest they could not see in visible light;
Vaguely they bore her inner mightiness.
(S 26)
Or bound by the senses and the longing heart,
170 Adoring with a turbid human love,
They could not grasp the mighty spirit she was
Or change by closeness to be even as she.
(S 27)
Some felt her with their souls and thrilled with her,
A greatness felt near yet beyond mind’s grasp;
175 To see her was a summons to adore,
To be near her drew a high communion’s force.
(S 28)
So men worship a god too great to know,
Too high, too vast to wear a limiting shape;
They feel a Presence and obey a might,
180 Adore a love whose rapture invades their breasts;
To a divine ardour quickening the heart-beats,
A law they follow greatening heart and life.
(S 29)
Opened to the breath is a new diviner air,
Opened to man is a freer, happier world:
185 He sees high steps climbing to Self and Light.
(S 30)
Her divine parts the soul’s allegiance called:
It saw, it felt, it knew the deity.
(S 31)
Her will was puissant on their nature’s acts,
Her heart’s inexhaustible sweetness lured their hearts,
190 A being they loved whose bounds exceeded theirs;
Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,
Answering with the flower’s answer to the sun
They gave themselves to her and asked no more.
(S 32)
One greater than themselves, too wide for their ken,
195 Their minds could not understand nor wholly know,
Their lives replied to hers, moved at her words:
They felt a godhead and obeyed a call,
Answered to her lead and did her work in the world;
Their lives, their natures moved compelled by hers
200 As if the truth of their own larger selves
Put on an aspect of divinity
To exalt them to a pitch beyond their earth’s.
(S 33)
They felt a larger future meet their walk;
She held their hands, she chose for them their paths:
205 They were moved by her towards great unknown things,
Faith drew them and the joy to feel themselves hers;
They lived in her, they saw the world with her eyes.
(S 34)
Some turned to her against their nature’s bent;
Divided between wonder and revolt,
210 Drawn by her charm and mastered by her will,
Possessed by her, her striving to possess,
Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts
Hugging the bonds close of which they most complained,
Murmured at a yoke they would have wept to lose,
215 The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love:
Others pursued her with life’s blind desires
And claiming all of her as their lonely own,
Hastened to engross her sweetness meant for all.
(S 35)
As earth claims light for its lone separate need
220 Demanding her for their sole jealous clasp,
They asked from her movements bounded like their own
And to their smallness craved a like response.
(S 36)
Or they repined that she surpassed their grip,
And hoped to bind her close with longing’s cords.
(S 37)
225 Or finding her touch desired too strong to bear
They blamed her for a tyranny they loved,
Shrank into themselves as from too bright a sun,
Yet hankered for the splendour they refused.
(S 38)
Angrily enamoured of her sweet passionate ray
230 The weakness of their earth could hardly bear,
They longed but cried out at the touch desired
Inapt to meet divinity so close,
Intolerant of a Force they could not house.
(S 39)
Some drawn unwillingly by her divine sway
235 Endured it like a sweet but alien spell;
Unable to mount to levels too sublime,
They yearned to draw her down to their own earth.
(S 40)
Or forced to centre round her their passionate lives,
They hoped to bind to their heart’s human needs
240 Her glory and grace that had enslaved their souls.