The Secret Splendour

O Wide-winged crucifixion in the sky,

Floating in a light of sempiteinal ease,

Singing in a fire of incorruptible joy—

 Bird with full stretch of golden reverie

Spanning thy own vast soul and breaking forth

 To sapphire liberties of the Unknown!

O same bright body that on blinded earth

Liest pinned by steely spikes of mortal law,

With human hands thrown out in time's fatigue,

Palms bearing the dark boor of torn life-blood,

Nails frozen to a sky's blue cut and crushed!

O supine sorrowful creature, lift thy gaze

There where the invisible cross creating all

And speeding all to the Space-Self's four extremes—

Rapt Being, locked Knowledge, poised Ecstasy,

Gigantic Rhythm of oneness millionfold—

Is an omnipresent moving mystery,

With those white pinions of thy Archetype

Held ever unfurled beneath the viewless power

In deep suspense yet wide discovery!

Mirror in thy inmost heart the apocalypse

That hangs above thee as thy timeless truth.

Then, like a miracled lightning which at once

Shoots down and up, thou It catch to a single fate

Of freedom there and freedom here, in a bliss of the All,

Thy pulse of beauty cloven now in two

By a cross of heaven and a cross of hell!

21.5.48

Page 251