The Adventure of the Apocalypse

The eternal vast

Sunk in a gulf that seems to reach no close,

Winged to a mountain climbing without end,

Stretched till the heart has grown horizonless,

We touch the Vast of the supracosmic Self.

Night is not there, nor day; yet both lie dense

For ever in a mighty measureless mood

Coloured with That for which no word is born—

A night where frozen is all mortal sound,

A day that burns up every tongue of time!

But though the earth-cry shrivels and falls away

And human gaze is buried by the mass

Of an infinite sun no sky can utter forth,

A salamander of omniscient sleep

Is laughing and dancing in the invisible blaze.

Body that calls with eyes that are beyond,

He bears the smile that makes all things divine,

His stainless fingers touch truth everywhere.

Ear cannot seize his rhythm of deathless life,

But if deep calm can drown the universe

The rapt enchanter slips into our soul

And through his own self-hearing reverie

We learn the secret of the eternal Vast.

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