The Secret Splendour

The Asura

Yoga by force of the titanic will.

The mind caught mercilessly and made still—

Fenced with barbed nerves electrified by fear

Of the free world, the ascetic heart beats clear

Of all the flushed variety of time—

Lonely and lean, tortured by one sublime

Mania of world-loss and self-sacrifice

In the locked light of trance-immobile eyes,

His body prostrate under his spirit's stamp,

He turns rapt life God's concentration camp.

The Deva

Alone, like the horn of the rhinoceros—

Yet in his solitude the world's fires are shaped:

Omnipotence looks out from a athomless peace—

Farness and freedom are the source of all light.

The animal, drawn into depths and distances.

Burns a pure power bursting a deathless gold

Through the black heart and the grey brain of Time—

An all-knowing Sun whose heat is infinite love.

O loins remote, consuming each desire,

Plunging the whole universe into an abysm of Bliss!

4.5.54

Page 576