The Secret Splendour

The Call*

Solitude

A sudden sorrow has covered her eyes

And they mirror not branch or bird in their lakes,

But a heavy wind blows that earth never knew

Across their shadow-profundities,

And her glance has swept along with that breeze

To some end of the world where spaces of blue

Are lost in a colourless blind surmise

And sweet forms perish and a great hush wakes

And all the wandering white stars cease....

No music have I - she cares not to hear,

When divine distresses are haunting her brow

Though her mouth knows not grief and her eyes no tear.

In this Indian night of her dead desire,

Cold with a calm of sacred bliss,

She loves no more with the body's fire:

Unpassioned she yearns to he God's far kiss

As the Kanchinjanga lifts to the sky!

Renunciation

In one night - one dread right

I have killed the whole rich earth:

You called on me to seek the formless light

And slay the passionate beauty of this birth -

So through my heart's deep pain

 Has died the lure of love and blossoming mirth.

I feared you would be fleet

And leave me lonely in life's narrow street

While you across your shut eyes' calm arcane

* Adapted from poems of 1927.

Page 506

Would soar beyond the last cold spark

 Of matter dreaming in the endless dark.

 Now 1 have wooed

The Unseen above the pageant of our joys

And fled from all your colour and your voice

To find you formless in my soul's infinitude!

1936

Page 507