The Secret Splendour

Greatness

Greatness and gaiety go hand in hand.

Breaking through common bonds of human kind,

 The epoch-maker knows no wavering

Or tremor—least the Mystic Messenger.

No panic for the Splendour from the peaks-

Its gaze outruns all distances and grips

Each danger far ahead of the dire stroke

And laughs with deep prepotence. There's no fate

With sudden leap from darkness. Even in grim

Postures of life its heart has shed all fear.

Reckless of what may wound its venturings,

It goes upon its gleaming way With a smile.

 No rest until its own self's image, lost

 In the world-abyss, grows one with the summit-shine

And climbs the peaks with greatness's gaiety!

26.7.1992

Far

Far from his own heartbeat, his wakeful day

Breathes a huge mountain-air is lucidity

And views a wide earth many-faced yet one.

A calm conspiracy of signalling stars,

An infinite mystery's throb or silvery throb

Of news from nowhere tingling everywhere,

Is now his sleep. Within his fragile form

Gods move with radiant smiles from hush to hush

Of inmost heaven: an immortality

Touches with healing hands the million shards

Left round his stillness by the tramp of time.

1.7.1993

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