Poems by Themis

  Poems



First Edition 1952

Second Edition 1994

 

(Typeset in Palatino 11/14)

 

 

 

 

ISBN 81-7058-383-7

© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1994

Published by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education

Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry

PRINTED IN INDIA

Publisher's Note

 

We are very happy to bring out this collection of poems by Themis (the name given by the Mother to Tehmi for the first publication of her poems). A professor of English Literature at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education for twenty-five years, she now teaches Sri Aurobindo's works. With her fine perceptive insight into Sri Aurobindo's poetry she has over the years shared her knowledge with many of her students and has been a source of inspiration to them.

The readers will find it of interest to know the comment Sri Aurobindo made when most of the poems in Part One were read out to him by Nirodbaran:


"The poems are remarkable, especially the later ones. They have power of revelatory image and phrase and of expressing spiritual experience. Also, her later poems are very remarkably built, the thought is worked out in a perfect beginning, middle and end in a way which is not very common. Many poems contain a beautiful lyrical quality.

"The early poems too are very powerful expressions of the kind of experience she had and as poetry hardly inferior to the later ones. There are many remarkable lines and stanzas though they are not as well-built as the later ones."




Introduction

 

Asked — rather honoured — to introduce this collection of poems, I cannot begin better than by repeating what I wrote to their author in 1951 when they first came to me in typescript:

"You are a very fine poet. You have a genuine gift spontaneously sustained over years and some of your pieces are of absolutely first-rate quality. And this quality is not only exquisiteness: there is a distinct vein of what must be called greatness — that is to say, the thought, the vision, the emotion have both weight and depth and are carried to us on a rhythmic tone bringing a touch of some infinite which suggests a beyond to all that can be uttered. Often your expression is, as you have put it in your letter to me, "quiet" — but nobody can mistake your quietness for absence of the stately, the wide-ranged, the deep-plunging. No doubt, your style is mainly lyrical and not ostensibly epical, nor are you markedly dynamic as a rule, but there can be not only lyrical largeness coupled with intensity but also a lyricism quietly commanding as well as intense and such lyricism can, in addition, keep mostly its exquisiteness in front without ceasing to offer its own greatness."

Looking across the forty years and odd that have elapsed since I wrote these words, I do not find any reason to change my view. Nowhere in the mass of work given for publication, covering various moods and occasions, is any failure. Oriented to the presence of the Divine Beloved everywhere, the expression rings true to my ear in all kinds of keys. I note gentle whisperings at times, a low-pitched language yet never a lack of felicity — as in the subtle phrase,

... a smile the very soul's caress —

or else a homely turn of communication lights up with an inner truth:

 

When marketings are over,

Your charities unfold,

And touch the bowls of beggars

And fill them with your gold.

 

Then there is a note of sudden power springing a surprise of both travail and triumph of the spirit:

 

The pathway of the darkness bends and breaks Within abysses of eternal suns.

 

The same kind of surprise meets us in the thrilled violence of

 

When all your life has gone to pieces

Smashed on the stillness of your soul.

 

The inner being, the inner response, the inner light: these are the predominant motives of the inspiration of Themis's book. All of them are unforgettably suggested in the stanza:

 

There's just one treasure worth your buying,

Beyond all splendours you may find,

Within the tumult and the crying —

The silence of the sunlit mind.

 

The last phrase has lingered in my memory for years and again and again a prayer to the very divinity whom Themis has worshipped and worded has formed on my lips in her own language:

 

O wizard Love, Enchanter, Thou,

Unweave the darkness, place

Thy stars of peace upon my brow.

Thy sun-truth on my face.

 

10.12.1993

Amal Kiran

(K. D. Sethna)

 

 






TO MOTHER






 


Part One





 

21st February — Night

 

The far voices of the earth die:

And in the vast lone hush of Being, Thou

Foldest Thy love around my cry. ...

 

The worlds dissolve to darkness now,

And in the gaps of emptiness we fly.

Beyond the farthest star-hill's brow. ...

 

Aeons- of memoried night unroll

Their cycles of chained Karmic griefs and mirths

Across the winging of my soul;

 

Thou bearest me past myriad births,

Fire-wheels of deaths and destiny's control,

To silent fashionings of new earths. ...

 

A white day dawns upon the deep,

The frozen rocks of Space divide and free

The warm gold mystery they keep.

 

O power-winged Love, Thou bearest me

Over storm-black gulfs and endless mires of sleep,

To sunlit havens of purity.


Page 1

New Birth

 

Within the night of my earth-reverie,

White flame-blades swiftly cut the veils of gloom,

A soft cloud floats across the shining sea,

And the blue light of your Presence fills the room...

 

The voice of Love's redemption comes to me,

Bridging eternities of star-swept doom;

The power of your white birth sets me free

From vaulted rocks of death and Time's ghost tomb

 

Now only a fine blue tranquillity

Enwraps the child-soul in your mystic womb—

 Placenta of creation's memory,

An arabesque from Joy's exquisite loom.

 

Page 2

Shelter

 

Draw close to me, O magic Heart,

The thunders gather over the deep,

Red flaming winds have torn apart

The veils of dream and screens of sleep.

 

Draw close to me within the night;

The wild beasts in the water-cave

Are grappled in a deadly fight,

And there is none but You can save.

 

O heart of Love, enfold the seas,

And sentinel my helplessness;

Open your harbours of white peace

And shield me in your coved caress.

 

O shining Light, illumine, free

The dream-delusion on the wave,

The ancient sleep upon the sea,

The wild beast in the water-cave.

 

Stand far no more in star-carved trance,

But in your beauteous warmth draw close,

Rapture me in your mystic dance,

Enhaven me in your deep repose.


Page 3

Seeking

 

I looked for you beyond the ways,

 Beyond the seas and skies;

And when I'd gone the round of all,

 I found you in my eyes.

 

And in my heart's deep inmost cave

Your Love's sweet presence stood,

A flame of golden ecstasy,

And white beatitude.

 

I went the round of all the world,

And tried each luring faith,

And never dreamt I'd find you furled

Within this body's swathe.

 

O hidden Sun within my night,

Moon-nectar in my breast,

Star-eye within my inward sight,

Who make yet all my quest

 

Turn outward through the seas and skies,

Till everywhere I see

The Love that dwells within my eyes

Feed all things secretly;

 

And all impassioned questings cease

Within the flaming Sun,

Within the beauty of the peace

Where you, all, I are one.


Page 4

By Day and Night

 

You did not come by day or night:

My yearning heart's deep agony

Grew tensed into a flame of light

That burnt me inly, silently. ...

 

Yet day and night, Love, You were there,

Holding me in your close caress;

Only my soul lay unaware

And sorrowed in her loneliness.

 

Yes, day and night your white love kept

Its shining vigil over me,

 Nourished and warmed me while I slept

Within your world-womb's mystery.

 

But now that I am born again

Of your pure mystic body's clay,

Your love-seal's on my lonely pain,

My heart in yours all night and day.


Page 5

Absence

 

The utmost sadness of the hours

When You are gone from me;

And when no more your Presence flowers

Upon the mystic Tree.

 

Though winds pass by and golden rains,

And birds and butterflies,

Within the sapless roots and veins,

 All sweetness, all life dies.

 

The worlds revolve in blank grey skies,

 And sun-stars whirl away,

And day and night the seed-heart cries

Within its jail of clay.

 

O Love, your grace and beauty shower

Upon the dark, dry Tree;

Restore your Presence and your Power,

Blossom once more in me.


Page 6

Intimations

 

Strange songs from far beyond the waters

 Come drifting here to our shore;

New melodies, entranced with pureness,

Woven of moon-worlds' secret lore.

 

The earth lies silent, drunk with dreamings,

 Enrapt within the veils of sound;

The magic of moon-chantings luring

Its spirit to the far Profound.


Page 7

Awakening

 

The paths of the moon curve and falter

Within the gulfing night;

The horizons undulate and alter,

The keen stars take their flight.

 

The soul, asleep within the waters,

Unfolded and alone,

Stirs restive in the silent grottos,

Adream with the Unknown.

 

The strong winds rock the earth to pieces,

And trees uprooted lie;

The spirit muses and increases

Beyond the unbarred sky.

 

The searching joy-rays run their fingers

Reluming through the deeps

Each soul-drop where the darkness lingers,

 And God's white glory sleeps.


Page 8

Moon-vigil

 

Within tonight's moon-vigil,

Open, O lotus heart;

White peace is over the waters,

The darkness cleaves apart

To shining caves of being,

Spaces of endless light,

Illumined through the ages

By moons beyond our sight. ...


Page 9

To Mother

 

Alone within the agonising night,

Earth-broken, ignorant, to You I call,

 O Mother-Love who are my all in all,

To gather me into your heart of light.

 

My body vibrates with small flames of white;

Over the waters of pain, through Matter's wall,

Within the heart echoes your soft foot-fall,

Approaching down your mystery-haloed height:

 

The pathway of the darkness bends and breaks

Within abysses of eternal suns;

 Within earth's veins and cells the white fire runs,

The storms of pain relax to silvern seas;

And all my being lost in You awakes

Within your body of unutterable peace.


Page 10

A Revelation

 

Love, something of your mystery

Was shown to me tonight;

The vision of your purity,

The vision of your light.

 

The secret workings of your Power

Were opened to mine eye,

I saw within a silent hour

Your eternities pass by.

 

The sacred wisdom, by your grace,

Was then made known to me;

I saw the beauty of your face

Through all infinity.

 

The stars and suns and revelling seas

 Put forth your deep delight,

Gold streams of joy and shining peace

Were unveiled to my sight.

 

The triumph of your winds and storms,

Your exquisite, strange art,

The rapture of your myriad forms,

 Was poured upon this heart.

 

And then your overpowering love

Stretched out its arms anew,

And rapt me in a trance above,

And I was lost in You ....

 

O Love, what could I offer You,

Who am all stark and nude?

Only the love You give to me,

 My soul's white gratitude.


Page 11

Renewal

 

The golden roof has split in twain,

And all God's waterfalls,

All raptures of the singing rain

Pour down the temple halls.

 

The blue-winged corniced angels wake

And see the mother-sky,

Out of their marble sleep they break,

And quietly upward fly.

 

On roof and pillar, wall and floor,

The irised diamonds shine;

Through every fluted column pour

Gold rivers of God's wine.

 

The ancient heathen fane that stood

Green-mossed by aeons of night,

Crusted within its lonelihood,

Is now the shrine of Light.

 

Within the purple marble veins

The silver waters run;

Upon the myriad altar-planes

Descends the beauteous Sun.

 

Now all is wrapt in calm repose,

 In veils of golden grace;

And in the inmost Silence glows

The beauty of God's face.


Page 12

Clay-flower

 

Take, O Love, this aching dust,

 Within your hands of power;

Break the seals of night's thick crust,

And mould me to a flower.

 

Through the veins of rock and earth

Let flow your streams of grace,

Kindle the roots anew to birth,

 Upon my earth-clods trace

 

Visions of the coming Spring,

Seed-secrets, mute and close,

Promise of the blossoming

Of your immortal Rose.


Page 13

The Waters

 

In the pools of being

When the angel stirs,

Murmur the healing

 fashioners.

 

Dark hearts of water

In the palsied night

Await quick fingers

 plucking light.

 

Dream of the spirit

In the body of things,

Transmuting quietly

beggars to kings.

 

Storm of the mad gods

To anger stirred,

Tossing from the darkness

one white word.

 

O clean still waters,

O rippling blood,

White flowers are springing

from the mud.

 

O leaping waters,

O laughing sea,

Bright rings of stillness

clasp your plea.

 

O angel of healing

In the nights of trance,

 Come trouble the waters

to a dance.



Page 14

Storm

 

After the beauty of your peace,

The rapture of your storm;

Your myriad joys and agonies

Of colour, light and form:

 

Swiftness and strength and sudden doom

 Upon earth's tortured pain,

Straightening lightnings that ungloom

 The chambers of the brain.

 

Dance of the rain-drops in each cell,

Translucent, naked, pure;

Clean wind-washes which dispel

The crowded dreams of yore.

 

Heaving seas of passionate flame

Refining clotted dust,

 Etching silently your name

Upon the rocks of trust.

 

And, at last, the heavens warm

Of sparkling purities:

After the beauty of your storm,

The rapture of your peace.


Page 15

Magdalen

 

When my soul grows rich like scented oil,

 I will pour it out at your feet;

Till then, O Love, leave me to walk

Alone the wild night street.

 

Till then, O Love, let my dark hair

Yet hide me when we meet;

But give me strength, at last to come

And wind it round your feet.


Page 16

Assurance

 

When all your life has gone to pieces,

Smashed on the stillness of your soul,

I'll shine within the interstices

And come and make you new and whole.

 

Be brave, fling all your being's treasure

Within the fires I have lit;

 My Love has neither stop nor measure,

So prove your love too infinite.


Page 17

Miracle

 

Your streams of sweet compassion flow

Into this desert's parched, still pain;

Its secret seed-flames burst aglow,

 And soon, a field of golden grain

 

Wakes dancing in the quiet breeze

Of your white love and light and power;

Dry sorrow's sands lie drunk with peace,

 Pain's cacti come to joyous flower.


Page 18

Golden Rain

 

Ever your nectared glory drips

 Its shining gold apocalypse

Through the rock-roofs of agelong sleep;

 Empooled within the heart's lone cave,

 Its joy-streams gather wave on wave,

Far wisdoms of your plumbless deep.

 

For ever pours the golden rain

Within the blue lakes of the brain

Its strange, entranced magic lore;

The great white swans descend from high

Within the spirit's vaulted sky,

And nestle on its star-pearl shore.

 

Wild gleaming cascades of delight

Drop headlong from the zenithed height

Empowered sun-truths, moons of grace;

And all the splendour, triumph, power,

 Is gathered to a mystic flower

Within the beauty of your face.


Page 19

Harvest

 

In the far dark of being, ere the flame

Burst through time-rocks and leaped

To immortality and the conscious sun, there came

To the fallow field of my earth God's winds that reaped

The spirit's harvest in the seed unsown:

All the wild night's unstarred, unknown

Gold seedlings swept into furrows of light,

Planted anew in pure gold clay, and the raining suns

and moons and stars

Fed their delight. ...

And now the flames burst through to meet

The gold of the conscious sun:

O Wheat

Of fire and gold, when this new harvest's done,

The stubble and chaff shall also be

Golden unto eternity.


Page 20

Truth

 

I do not try to cheat or please,

For He knows, He knows;

The little honey-gathering bees

Do not cheat the rose.

 

Before Him, there's nor lie nor pose,

Who is Truth and Light:

The pureness of His touch bestows

Vision on my night.


Page 21

Teshtar

 

How white you shine, how steadfast, sure,

O brightest star of the sky;

Star of the Prophet, — still and pure,

Above the night world's lie;

 

Above the waters, restless, strange,

Above the weltering mood

Of dark dream-surges, Time and change,

And soul's inquietude.

 

O star most perfect, bring to me

The spirit's calm delight;

Poised over earth's pain and ecstasy,

Make beautiful my night.


Page 22

Dhruva

 

This is the star of Truth; the night

Caves black and huge upon your soul;

Steady your wild mind on the light

That marks the splendour of the pole.

 

The moving stars that shape your track

Among earth's whirling destinies,

In endless cycles wheeling back,

Retoss your soul upon Time's seas.

 

But this is fixed: the star that brings

Wide peace and strength and sweet delight; —

The centre of the starry rings,

The one and only in your night.


Page 23

The Moon

 

In the shining silence of the skies,

The white moon stood tonight;

And though I slept, bent over my eyes,

 — Sweet sentinel of light.

 

And the darkness passed from me, I woke

Within, — tranced by her spell,

And saw, as each fine sleep-veil broke,

The moon in the heart's deep well.


Page 24

At Dawn

 

At dawn the winds of pureness

Come in with never a sound,

With only a clear blue gleaming,

Crystal from the far Profound...

To shut in the thoughts with stillness,

To keep the vast air thin,

And with the power of Silence awaken

The slumbering depths within;

The streams dance down for gladness

Through the rose-scent and the fern,

The lights dance down the angled glass,

In rays that paint and burn, —

Focussed back to the enduring whiteness

 

Whence the things of peace return:

The seal of an ancient sky-priest,

A brand on the forehead of earth,

Promising a far fulfilment,

Proving her noble birth;

The fires leap high in richness

And shape of their ash and gold

The forms of the primal dawn-world,

In patterns of love untold.


Page 25

Awaiting

 

Beloved, because eternities

Never close their gate,

Within an endless joyful peace

Eternally I waif.

 

Within my silence, soon or late,

Your sweet voice shall be heard;

And so in utter faith I wait

The coming of your Word.

 

Men marvel why I do not care,

 Or at my patience's store;

But You, Love know I'd wait for ever,

Waiting within your door.


Page 26

Reed of the Yamuna

 

Reed of the Yamuna,

The flute-boy is come,

 But ere through your body

The mad rhythms hum,

 

O reed of the river,

Much sorrow and strain

 Will be yours — the cleansing,

The shaping, notched pain.

 

From touch of sweet waters

And cool fragrant sand,

 The strong hand shall wrench you,

The passionate hand.

 

But when it puts through you,

With swiftness and poise,

The small knife of silver,

Be glad and rejoice.

 

Reed of the Yamuna,

The mute agony

Will pass through your being

And set your soul free;

 

Will pass like a dark spell,

 And you who endured,

Find music and meaning

In the breath of the Lord.


Page 27

Brindaban

 

Where the frail dawnlight trickled through

The red-rose leaves and scent,

By pathways where the moth-hour flew,

My golden lover went.

 

In alleys sweet with moss and fern,

Where the sunlight trembles through,

In a dance of warm white whisperings

Upon the iris dew;

 

And the twittering secrets meet and scatter

The flutings of the day,

 Between the tiny winks of silence,

He softly went away.

 

When the moon-cleaned fruit is gathered home,

Through watches of the night,

He will come again with song and dance

Within the winds of Light.

 


Page 28

The Gopi

 

I go to fetch the water

From the Yamuna rill;

I know you will be there, Love,

I have two pots to fill:

 

The one is for my mother-in-law,

Of whom I stand in trembling awe;

That is the pot upon my head,

May it sink to the river-bed!

 

The other I in secret bring

Most quietly to You, my King;

 The pitcher of my heart to fill

With the sweet waters of your Will.


Page 29

Moon-flower

(Consecration)

 

In the dark hid grots the moon-seed dreams,

And secretly unfolds to bloom,

Feeding upon the purple streams

And blood-red saps of earth and doom.

 

Gathering and transmuting all

To one immaculate flame-white,

It flowers beneath your loved foot-fall,

The moon-flower of the heart's delight.

 


Page 30

Offering

 

Priestess, what will you sacrifice?

The altar of the dawn's afire,

The gods stoop from their paradise

To taste the ash of your desire.

 

What can you offer save a dream?

This body is but dust of earth,

And life's a purple passion-stream,

And mind a moon of airy birth.

 

Within the Fire offer fire,

Your silent heart's pure lonely flame;

 What have you lovelier or higher

To burn before his beauteous Name?

 

O priestess-soul, before He call,

The Sun-God of the mystic dance,

Gather your strength and lay your all

Upon the dawn's red altar-trance.

 

Then He, the Lord of sacrifice

Will open his gold-gates of grace,

And lay upon your new-born eyes

The lustrous vision of his face.


Page 31

Agni

 

Springing fire and dancing flame,

Ecstatic to the tips,

A-crackling joy-sparks, where your name

Smoke-twirls and thins and slips...

 

Upward and upward laugh and sing,

Within the spaceless night,

The glory of the Fire-King,

His endless realms of Light.

 


Page 32

Flight

 

Within the tranced night,

The flames of souls unfold

Their wings of shimmering gold,

And to You take their flight.

 

You Guardian of the Fires,

O heart of radiant love,

Direct their flight above,

Beyond the mind's blue spires.

 

Shelter them beneath your white

Compassionate robes of stars,

Beyond the earth's dream-bars.

Fold them to your delight.


Page 33

Beyond the Veils

 

Beyond the beauteous veils of dew,

Open your eyes, adream, aswoon,

Where new translucencies move through

The secret spaces of the moon.

 

Beyond the Silence's covering,

The unborn purities await, —

Each folded in its angel-wing, —

Dawn-bugles from the gates of Fate.

 

The blue vaults of the heavens divide,

Dream spirits pass in, one by one,

Earth-radiances arise and glide,

Into the kingdoms of the Sun.

 

But you must pass still far beyond,

Above the terraced truths, and free

Your tranced soul from its last dream-bond

Into unringed Eternity.


Page 34

Gift

 

Beloved, you bring to me

Beauty beyond compare:

The pure, white ecstasy —

The hour of silent prayer.

 

The wells of light unclose

Beneath your touch of flame;

All memories repose

Regathered in your name.

 

My muted thoughts evolve

Swift wings of golden fire;

Within your breath dissolve

All darkness and desire.

 

The heavens unfold above,

Eternities of grace;

Resplendent worlds of love,

Mirrored within your face.


Page 35

Presence

 

O beauteous singing Presence,

Who were the heart of me,

Why have You sunk in darkness

Of the wild, weltering sea?

 

Churning the deeps of being,

Your pillar of light churns hells;

Black wave and poison foamings

Engulf the stars and cells.

 

Blue-throated Love, O lift me

From the blind night's abyss,

Upon the spirit's forehead

Plant your white nectared kiss;

 

And move upon the waters

Calming each storm-tost wave,

Call forth the moon-white Goddess

From the hidden jewelled cave;

 

Once more unfold your beauty

Upon the lotused sea,

O golden shining Presence,

Who are the heart of me.


Page 36

The Key

 

There are no keys to the place of the Presence,

We wait and wait outside;

If you should hear the stir of His footsteps,

Mingle in dust your pride.

 

Only His will shall open the strict gate,

We wait until He choose;

My key of white peace, your key of white passion,

Will they be any use?

 

The sword of pain hangs over the doorway,

Pray you, don't risk the door;

'Tis handsome waiting after the journey

Bridging the farther shore...

 

But one in our midst, whom the urge could hold not,

Sprang up with sudden start,

And went to the silent doors of unawareness;

The sword went through his heart.

 

And someone moved quickly within the stillness

Away on the other side;

A key clicked, the hurried key of welcome

The doors were opened wide...

 

Then there is a way to will His willing,

If we should face the pain;

But who shall will our needed courage?

How vain we are, how vain.

 

There are no keys to the place of the Presence,

Only His love bestows

Upon our souls the infinite vision,

Upon our toil, repose.


Page 37

Thou and All

 

Sweet Love, now all is over with me;

The myriad worlds within my heart

Are dead in thy infinity,

And now, Thou only art.

 

The souls of things, untrammelled, free,

Break through earth's dam, the body's wall,

Mingle and merge within thy sea,

And Thou, O Love, art all.

 

But through thy silence and thy peace,

Descends a voice from planes above,

Vibrates and runs upon the seas,

And all is Thou, O Love.


Page 38

Soul

 

You who come now through the darkness,

Long ways of night and dream and death,

Wading through the mud of sorrow,

Towards the heaven's fragrant breath;

 

You, beloved of the Highest, 

White child of the eternal Fire,

What have you to do with clingings,

With trammels of the earth's desire?

 

Leap and free yourself from bondage,

Nor pause nor rest till all be done;

Till your heart's gold pureness glimmer,

Enrapt within the Beauteous Sun.


Page 39

The Player

 

Keep your head, my heart, my heart,

Keep your head;

If you muddle through your part,

You'll soon be dead.

 

If you bungle all your task,

Day after day,

Tossing off your painful mask,

Who'll play the play?

 

Grant this much to Him who thought

Playing such fun;

Pretend to be what you are not —

For 'tis all one.


Page 40

Confessional

 

Today I went to the confessional

Of my own heart; it can't forgive, it says,

This injury, the sharp unquiet phase

Of weak life I have brought; it cannot lull

Remembrance, cannot offer magical

Ablution for a sin which keeps ablaze

Its consciousness of petty, perverse ways,

Which goads the gnawing worm within the skull.

 

What have I done? Despite this mock regret,

The innocence of the wild earth-desire

Breaks through this last confession, conquering strife:

The heart which still refuses to forget

Still feels aright; no sacrificial fire

Could purify the deed that builds its life.


Page 41

Spell

 

My dear, don't ever talk like this:

Is it not time to understand

That in this poor queer world our bliss

Is not within our hand?

 

Why should we torture so our heart,

Repeating endlessly the spell,

When all its magic, all its art,

Opens a deeper hell?

 

Unweave the incantation's power

 Before its fire touch the brain,

Be still within the starlit hour,

And let Truth heal our pain.


Page 42

Be Mute...

 

Be mute, O heart,

Till thick dark over the limbs and lips

Seals the white skin impassioned whips

have cut apart.

 

Before your word

May meet the winds and waters, come

To silent places where all dumb

lone things are heard.

 

Let no tear flow:

Why should you try so very hard

To search and see if night is starred,

or suffer so?

 

Lest you should tell

Your pain in tears or vacant eyes,

Take care, before the moon arise,

to cloak them well.

 

If aught reveal

In you the hatred and the sting,

Go down the dark, discovering

the pools which heal.


Page 43

 

Love, long ago we two were one...

What was it made You speak that prayer,

And give me this dark cross, alone?

— The cross which now it is You who bear.

 

They say You wished to see your joy —

Had we for that to live apart?

Had You to shape of clay a toy,

Before You could enjoy my heart?

 

Because, remembering not your mirth,

I cry over all my hurt and pain,

Must You now push through clay and earth,

Before we can be one again?


Page 44

Lone Tune

 

All that our dark earth was,

All it will ever be,

Is rooted in the Cause

That Is, eternally.

 

The Silence breaks apart

In myriad shreds of time,

Leaving a lonely heart,

Weaving a lonely rhyme.

 

Unconscious stars commune

In vain with senseless suns,

Each winging its lone tune

'In time' — sad, lonesome puns.

 

O Love, pour forth your grace

And make our cracked tones whole;

At last, unveil your face,

And fold us to your soul.


Page 45

Yearning

 

Evening stars and morning suns,

And all the callous, vagrant runs

Of empty days that cross the sea

Of dark, unhallowed memory..

.

Day in, day out, the fiend red sands

Run through death's steely, glassy hands;

And passion's waters break and roar,

Tide in, tide out, upon thought's shore.

 

And Beauty that awakes to kiss

The soul, but falls in pain's abyss;

Losing all meaning in earth's mesh,

All sanctity within the flesh.

 

When will You cut the devil-masks

And give us all the spirit asks;

Beyond Time's tainted sands and seas,

Waft us to pristine purities?


Page 46

Thirst

 

From lands of famine we have spoken,

Before the coming down of rain,

Before the radiant one, the purest,

Has cleansed the fields of thirst and pain;

 

While trembling rivers lie and wait

Aswoon in yearning mute and long,

For God's white touch upon their limbs

To gather meaning for their song;

 

And still dark wraps the prisoned root,

Longing to shape its ecstasy

Of happy drink, in flower and fruit,

When glimmering rain shall set it free;

 

And little voices, little dreams,

And birds, and golden germs and seeds

Wait praying for your purity

To make them prosper in their creeds.

 

Before you come, O Beautiful,

Upon the unfilled heart of earth,

Only the words of sorrow move,

Only the songs of dust and dearth.

 

In silence come, in secrecy,

Or splendour of the lightning vow,

O come, O long-awaited come,

With purest touch on every brow.


Page 47

Unfulfilled Fulfilment

 

Within this deep fulfilment grows

the vision of a richer glory,

making unfulfilled

our hearts.

Our dreams in meeting kiss

to momentary glory,

and all eternity's white dreams

pass unfulfilled...

This mock of each fulfilment

we must pass, pass its small completeness

to gather all those dreamers' places

beyond our lone time-paths.

The emptiness of this fulfilment

grows upon our vision's heart,

our fear's heart that dreams

the next quick empty moment

like sudden death...

and dreams too the fulfilment just beyond, —

beyond our power:

a blessing that shall turn the ways to meeting,

(the incantation's half-felt meaning

grown bright with gifts...)

the undreamt meeting and fulfilment

yet never our last...


Page 48

Death

 

I am become as nothing,

A hollow pit,

A vacancy of sorrow,

Unlifed, unlit;

A ghost of empty silence,

Afloat in dream,

Through starless wastes of darkness,

Across night's stream;

Over voids of blank unseeing,

Undwelt of God;

A numb grey pain of being,

A crumbled clod...

 

Why have You gone and left me

Bereft of grace,

Within this soundless, senseless

Cold tomb of space?

 

— Yet with sweet memories of

Your Love and light,

Of Beauty now withdrawn from

My stained dimmed sight;

Of deep warm Joy overflooding

Each cell with song,

Of Life-founts rippling over

In rapturous throng —

Pale memories still haunting

The prisoned breath,

That carve my pain more deep through

This living death.


Page 49

Pralaya

 

It is the hour of dark on land and sea:

The moon with its pale dream-magic is dead,

And the stars that spun forth our melody,

Cold and uncreating, unsanctified...

On the bosom of immortal worlds moves a hand

Heavy with the weight of unblossoming power,

To crush to leaden slumber the colours of earth,

To a dreamless, senseless grey;

Into the warm glory-heart of the buds,

The sins fall chill and thick with their choking whispers,

And darkling strangers submit to the purging curse...

 

O danceless hour, undaring even to move on

Lest the one blessing of inaction be lost,

You wait unquestioning the meaningless pain,

This still agony of an uncoloured world, where

even our striving seems sin; —

You wait...

And pale birds sit trembling in the pools of night,

Hearkening to the words of the dust.


Page 50

On the Cross

 

There's no respite; the riddles loom

Around my thought, and fold on fold

Thick sins pleat up, till cold, unsouled,

I lie within a tomb.

 

This loneliness that eats men's flesh

Has wormed the very life of me;

Will you not yet unweave the mesh,

Clean me and let me see?

 

The myriad purities and powers

Hang limp, shrink and betray their trust;

Sweet innocencies fall like flowers,

Unfold their rot and turn to dust.

 

A night of blind and void desire,

Of unforgiven wills and ways,

And mockeries of thief and liar,

Wraps up my coward heart's delays.

 

The snake-proud puzzlings twitch and moan,

The old temptations scream their plea,

And in the dark I'm all alone:

Lord, why have you forsaken me?


Page 51

Night of Soul

 

No rosary threaded with flower and pearl

Revolves in my fingers of hunger and glut:

My heart is as black as a gipsy-girl

With her mouth tight shut.

 

The places of earth are as dark as a sin,

And dark, furrow-dark is the song of the sea;

My thought's swooning steps are beating within

A dead litany.

 

The freedom of winds stings the trees' repose,

Till leaf-life is blackened with poison and blight;

My lips are sick-pale with the oozing which flows

From the breast of the night.

 

Unholy, the hollowing, curving white hands,

Which, empty of gifts, never burn down and die;

Which put out the sacrifice-fire, lest brands

Remember their lie.


Page 52

Secret of the Night

 

I asked for darkness; thought me wise and strong,

And fit in faith to meet its heaviness;

It came, unstarred and mute, lest I transgress

To love it only for its stars, its song; -

So set me free of sin, inconscient wrong,

To leave me in my lonely, pained distress;

My crumbled impudence to break and bless,

And distribute as bread to the world's throng:

 

And I, left limp, then saw it face to face,

In silent purity against my wound

With healing touch; and suddenly I knew

The secret of the nights that pass unmooned,

The winter-hunger, blindness, choked disgrace,

Knew all my dark, my sorrow is but You.


Page 53

Paradox

 

A moon upon the heart of darkness,

A light upon the sea,

 My little pride shows all its sparkling,

And You keep showing me.

 

Were You the moon upon my darkness,

The light upon my sin,

I'd understand the magic marking,

Of spells which write us kin.

 

But You are smooth with dark awareness,

And I, moon-like, a stain;

And your still heart can wait and carry

The beating of my pain.

 

And You, wide sea, are dark With drinking

The sin of stream on stream;

Among your tossed-up, floating trinkets,

My light stands like a dream.

 

I flaunt our kinship over sky-earth,

My pride against your peace,

Till gathered to your deepest silence,

Flaunts grow to truth and cease.


Page 54

The Tale

 

Love, every time you come to me

And say you have come to stay,

I put on my brief ecstasy,

And then I run away.

 

You ask too much, my heart's afraid

To give up all, — it flies,

Resumes its old safe masquerade,

And hugs its old sweet lies.

 

In patient trust You wait and call,

And wait for many a day;

But when I don't return at all,

You quietly go away.

 

And all my heart's a stone of pain,

I curse me that I fail:

But when, O Love, you come again,

I still repeat the tale.


Page 55

Prison

 

Why don't You let me go?

I cannot rise

Unto your pureness or

Look in your eyes.

 

Love, don't torment me so,

But let me be;

Forget me, leave me out,

So I be free.

 

You crush me with your love,

I sit confused,

Nor can take joy in things,

As once I used.

 

You hover round my soul

All day and night,

And press me in, and stop

My coward flight.

 

I wish you'd never come,

I cannot fly...

And yet, if You should go,

Love, I would die.


Page 56

"Obsession"

 

Dear, every moment, every moment, it is but you

and you;

I cannot speak a word lest any hear your name

dance through;

I cannot lift my eyes lest someone see within your face

And call my love a wanton fancy and a cheap disgrace.

I have hid my thought and hid my meaning from their

shame-squint view,

For every time the thought is yours, and every

meaning's you;

But they will never understand and they will never see

How utterly we two are one, how very utterly.

And they have so bewitched my mind, have cast

so black a spell

I cannot even dare to tell them what I needs must tell:

If words so mock the truth of love, if love must

never be heard,

Why did you, lord of Love, once come and make

yourself the Word?


Page 57

To Eros

(God's Love Incarnate)

 

Love, the world will wreck you; wait,

Fold your wings before they burn;

Once you pass the soul's white gate,

There is no peace and no return.

 

Human searching drops hot wax

Over your pure secrecies;

There is no touch of earth but cracks

The heart's white silence, steals your ease.

 

Earth is dark, unknowing, dumb;

How can darkness guess or see

What you are and why you come;

It destroys your purity.

 

Love, you do not heed a word,

Risk the night, the pain, the lie;

Lightning-winged wild heaven's bird,

Come and lift earth to the sky.


Page 58

The Rune

 

There is a memory that has no tune,

No shape for sense or ear or eye,

A lonely thing, an age-old rune,

Carved on the blue rocks of the sky.

 

When all our murmuring memories pass,

Drifting across the seas of time,

Winds of earth-loves among the grass,

Adream with vibrant song and rhyme;

 

Within the Silence shall unfold

The magic of the runic scroll,

The characters of sun-burnt gold,

Chiselled in fire upon the soul.


Page 59

The Root

 

The leaves were falling in October

And laughed with hidden fun,

Nudged, reeled and fell, not being sober

From taking too much sun.

 

They tumbled in a mad gold blunder,

Impatient of their breath,

And being drunk they heard the Wonder

Singing beyond their death.

 

And being dead they heard below them

The running, feeding wine,

And deeper yet where mad ones know them,

They saw the root-hearts shine;

 

Where held and nursed through all Octobers,

Live flower and leaf and fruit,

Bright suns which warm, dark earth which sobers,

In silence of the Root.


Page 60

Play

 

The world's bright voice and moody fakes

Keep us apart:

But quietly your beauty breaks

Within my heart.

 

You come in utter loneliness,

Call and deny,

Play with earth's ways, tease and confess

Your hidden lie.

 

White spaces fold their purity

Around my soul;

With utter truth You come to me

And make me whole.


Page 61

Lila

 

What is it matters, crazy one?

— The play of spirit in the universe,

the soul dancing its myriad dances

to the old remembered tune;

the joy-tinks dancers intersperse

among the stars, the heart's pursuit

within the maddened fancy's whirl

of One who dances opposite;

the spirit's singing ecstasy

in leaf and flower and powerful root,

in wind and sun and the limbs of a girl,

and leaping waves of the sea;

the beat, the eternal rhythmic beat

of pulsing blood, the swirl and sway,

the poise, the peace, the contemplation,

the miracle deep joy

of endless interplay.


Page 62

Maya

 

Your puzzles and pretences

Escape my new-learnt skill;

How many more wild senses

Must I unravel still?

 

O stop this hectic spreeing,

And give to me the bliss

Of your most pure white being,

 — O Love, my Love, just this.


Page 63

Adwaita

 

Who touched me? Shapes of music whisper

Of lonely memories which pass

Across the spirit's stillness, murmuring

 "All flesh is grass".

 

Who touched me? Shapes of music answer;

 "A wandering world-lost melody

Passed out into the wild night, saying,

'My soul is free'."

 

Where music spun its strange, fine soul-webs,

Turning each thought to song of dew,

Who touched me in the darkness, saying,

"But who are you?"


Page 64

Enchanter

 

Praised be Thou who touchest me

With Thy wand of ecstasy:

When the seven meanings pass

Through the lucencies of glass,

Twining to a rod of white

Drawn unto Thy Sun-delight;

When the tranced moon-waters roll,

In the caverns of the soul,

Deep reverberations stored

Of the laughter of the Lord;

When the stars of destiny

Break their Karmic seals and free

In the being's living breath

Secrecies of life and death,

Placing in my hands the key

Of Thy folded mystery; —

Sweet Enchanter, round me close

Magic circlets of Thy Rose.


Page 65

Psyche

 

Devils may dance their dances

As gleefully as gods;

The spirit takes its chances,

And whirls through mud and clods;

Retires and advances

Against strange odds.

 

Over good and bad it quivers

With equal joy in play:

Over desert sands or rivers,

Or stagnant pool or bay:

Where heaven or hell delivers

A night or day.

 

Earth's shapes unfurl and render

Their homage to its grace;

The skies unveil their splendour

Before its beauteous face;

And hell turns sweet and tender

Beneath rhythms of its pace.

 

Where through the ages flying

The Karmic cycle turns,

Within the storm's dark crying,

The silent spirit burns;

In births and deaths undying,

For ever Godward yearns.


Page 66

The Hill

 

At the brink of the abyss

Where our limp desires fall,

There is nothing more to miss,

And nothing to recall.

 

There is only one more hill

To climb, ere all be done,

Ere the beauteous Will fulfil

Itself in everyone.

 

But O Love, against the cheat

Of this soulless space and time,

Be the swift strength of our feet,

And the very hill we climb.


Page 67

Breaking

 

The world divides before my mind,

And breaks to pieces in my heart;

It is well the strangling thoughts unbind

And let my dreamings fall apart.

 

There may be hallowings for these

That came from out the mud and mire;

That darkness held within its peace,

And lifted up in shining fire.

 

But now that I know You are there,

Beyond the swift veils of the light,

This madness too has lost despair,

I see the breakings break aright.


Page 68

Rift and Reconciliation

 

Measuring the unfound thought

I founder; there is no measure

within these mind-scapes;

there is no leisure, no time

to stand or understand...wild shapes

intermingle, make quick rhyme

with oddly gestures; wriggle, chuckle through

heart-holes or arrow-shoot through will,

chill, chuck and hoot the reasOn-formings,

storming the well-pieced, well-collected, respected

sentiments of old;

of old — hell-priced, well-delecting intellect

in their lolled indifferences.

O crack, O smash through these perversions;

Think straight, think swift;

Rift of ages between will and desire

links us to unforgotten imperfections.

Spires of longing rise — oracle-landmarks,

 Star-pinnacles against solemn willed wronging,

Columned light over desert tracks,

Prophetic intuitions, cracking, cracking,

the world's sand-dry assertions.

For lying curled within the brain's dark,

lying furled in the body-waters,

the still lotus-spirit wills reconciliation;

Ultimate unfolding of beauty, last right of its being —

Its ultimate myriad-petalled delight.


Page 69

Perspective

 

Beyond the unperspected horizons is nothing;

Don't lie still, unsuspecting, dear;

Sit up or twist yourself into a posture

to picture the world straight;

Let the nerves storm, the bones grate,

the thought-curves gripe awry,

the wrench-twirls cry and torture, —

Till the whirl of blood tincture moods

aright; give themes their proper shade and colour,

discover all proportions — proper, unselfish,

right-toned.

They say, man becomes centre and measure of all

his gaugings, and self-centred, self-cinctured,

self-caged,

ventures to encounter Sun-Truth —

Sit up, though the limbs ache and hiss

their agony; sit up and see

with chastened eyes the starlit order;

Fling the girdle of your dances over

seas and mountains; meet

sunbeam and rain-beat

with the same God-mood; the horizon, dear,

is nothing; and all our beyond is here.


Page 70

Dream

 

Our small dreams having prospered, now we dream

this mighty one:

That the inscrutable hand has widened out

its web of prayer

To draw in each our wish and hope, so dark and

earthly spun,

And hold it in its glistening threads, transfused

to glory there;

That we have found courage enough to snap

these gloaming-bars,

To break at last the pageant-sham of being

beauty's slaves,

And free the idol Phoenix to soar up into the stars

Or burn its red-gold thanks for love in earth's

remotest caves...

Whose scattered ashes are remoulded to body forth

our dreams,

Our mute power to worship away all evil things

from Thee, —

For every dream's a duty here, and every good

that gleams

The other side of Beauty's veil, — as Thy reverse are we.


Page 71

The Gates of the Sun

 

Knock and knock at the gates of the sun,

Unveil the golden planes,

Where the shapes of the Light are spun,

Beyond the earth-sky chains.

 

All the stars of knowledge have sunk,

All wisdoms take their flight,

Fall and falter like one dead-drunk,

Upon the roads of night.

 

Madness heaves and a half-lit moon

Goes swimming through the brain;

Earth insists upon its boon,

The waters on their pain.

 

Let the myriad sins grow still,

The sorrows understand;

Mould the old worlds to the Will

That holds and powers your hand.

 

Come unfearing, knock and wait,

The gates shall swing apart;

You will go, past Wheels of Fate,

To the inmost golden Heart.


Page 72

Blue Silence

 

Now all is over and done,

No vagrant dreams arise,

The magic of moon and sun

Is lost within the skies.

 

Now all is gathered peace

Within the heart's white cave,

The calm of shining seas

Uncreased by wind or wave.

 

Within these solitudes

No drunk earth-voices come,

Only blue silence broods

In caverns lone and dumb.


Page 73

The Single Theme

 

My songs have but a single theme:

Your love, Beloved, and your grace;

The world is but a dream in dream,

And Truth's the beauty of your face.

 

They say my themes are narrow, small,

For they can hardly understand

That You, O Love, are all in all,

And all the worlds are in your hand;

 

That when I sing of You, I sing

Of worlds beyond and worlds above,

That even my poorest song can bring

Eternal answers from your love.


Page 74

PART TWO


Page 75

This Hidden World

 

Mysterious, magical, what is it there,

That secret sweetness in the core of things?

And this strange melody that flows and sings

In every atom of the earth and air?

Rock-crystals hold the light's delight, a rare

Close diamond-glow; pools ripple fairy rings,

Within dark burgeon-knots what live joy springs,

And what ecstatic flights the great palms dare!

 

This hidden world is vibrant with a Name,

A rapture pulsing in the heart's abyss,

Leaping in flame on flame of inward bliss;

Granite and flower and tree are fire and flame,

And eye of beast, and man's thought, word, desire;

And most the Word, the Name, is fire, is Fire.


Page 77

Dead Sleep

 

Dead sleep. — And are You watching over my sleep?

How grey and stony pass the days, the nights

More grey and blacker still; not one flame lights

The ashen senses, the mute mouth, the deep-

Sunk heart; no blood-streams pulse, no fresh

breaths sweep;

And mind, struck numb, has folded all its flights.

Are these the days of Death? The ancient rites

That sealed the sarcophagus on our leap

To immortality? No other way

But this? Eternal yearnings rock-immured

Within inconscient worlds slow tunnel through

To hells of senseless drouth, so fast secured,

The soul's explosive core no piercing ray

Can set aflame and free. And where are You?


Page 78

O Marvellous Friend

 

O marvellous Friend whose beauty binds

The star-worlds in its spell,

Whose wisdom broods within our minds,

Whose love glows in each cell,

 

When your vast flood of blinding light

Sweeps breaking through the brain,

And shakes the fixities of sight,

And cleans thought's cluttered drain,

 

The rose-fires burst through clotted clay,

The leashed heart snaps its chain,

Rockholds of darkness shattered away,

Over earth sun-showers rain.

 

The fields are fields of golden grain,

Each flower a seraph flower,

And nectar flows through every vein,

For eternity's in this hour.

 

O marvellous Friend, whose love-charms spin

A circle on the deeps,

The earth of gold, entranced within

Your lap of beauty, sleeps.


Page 79

On the Pathway

 

Across the fields of twilit grasses, you have

come to share my dream,

O brother of the haunting echoes, soon our souls

will be a gleam

Out-flung upon the blue-grey spaces, cleansed

within the cooling mist,

And shining white with pureness we shall move

towards the promised Tryst...

The shades of evening stir and gather, quiet in

the templed woods,

Where Peace dwells, a silent saint, and ever

on their beauty broods;

We walk within the dark green chambers, seeking

for the altar-throne,

Through miles and miles of branch-built aisles,

that keep their secret cold and lone.

The paths are filled with age and dimness,

memories of hopes long dead,

Of those that came down by these pathways, proud

in purple pomp and red;

Who shook the spring-leaves, clipped the branches,

made themselves a new wise road,

And wandered lost amid the windings, ere they

found the God's abode.

Cold sighs float by us, pale-lit ghost-shapes,

creeping down the powered dark,

Till there we kneel, two dreaming children,

praying for the fire-spark...

The sad old tree-hearts burst apart, a million

sorrows brush the wind,


Page 80

And slowly, down the long white pathway, comes

the One who never sinned.

Our eyes grow rich with crowded beauty as He

takes us by the hand,

And now we have met Him, touched Him, brother,

 He's not hard to understand.


Page 81

Age after Age

 

Age after age the cosmic scripts unfold

The secret destinies of timeless earths,

Changeless and changing through a myriad births,

Through giant undulations that break and mould

Stupendous mountain-strengths, the great gods' hold,

And unseen rooted powers chained in night,

Refashion scrolls of the designing Light,

And trace new lines for the life-charts unrolled.

 

Age after age — and the flying stars return

And turn the karmic gyres and whorls of flame,

Vast rings of fire that build, and once more burn,

Revolving fates, the same and never the same.

The spirit's titan Will splits all apart

To reveal the worlds of Beauty in its Heart.


Page 82

Dark Roots

 

From strange dark roots our being rose; the sun

That blazes manifold within each head

Once flung itself in weltering night, and sped

World within world; so too, in everyone

The same stars shine and the same rivers run;

And each is earth and fire, and gold and lead,

Both flaming lotus and it's muddy bed,

And all primeval Hell and Heaven have spun.

 

The riddle of our life that tears the brain,

Its every contradiction, every hitch,

Are knotted in that web of mysteries dire.

Nor is there any issue till we drain

Pure nectar from the very pits of pitch,

And alchemise the flesh to golden fire.


Page 83

All is You

 

Radiant beyond the gold of kings

Your lovelinesses shine,

O Queen of the secret heart of things,

O Mother-Love divine.

 

The splendour closes over my sight,

Upon my brow your kiss

Opens the inner worlds of light

Where all is vibrant bliss.

 

All things dissolve to ecstasy;

The being drawn above

Widens to your infinity,

Lifted in hands of love.

 

All calm, all peace, the mind's blue deep

Illumined lies in trance,

Within an endless glowing sleep,

A vast deliverance.

 

All, all is You: the heart's white flame

With your love burning bright,

Lips honey-sealed with your sweet name,

Flesh tranquillised to light.


Page 84

"There are moments when..."

 

O sweet Compassion, Heart of love,

What wondrous mercies flood our days;

Blind, foolish souls are rapt in light,

Deliverance lifts its joy and praise.

 

On heights where climbing pathways meet,

The toil-worn sages prayed for Grace;

But we, the dust beneath their feet,

Have seen the glory of Your face.


Page 85

Kurukshetra

 

The Wheels turn ever faster

Down the vast voids of night;

Unknown, unseen, the Master

Controls the cosmic fight:

 

Unmarked the Charioteer

Drives through the desperate strife,

Swiftly to kill, and clear

The battlefields of life.

 

Across the path of vision

The dragon passion's curled,

The devils of derision,

The witchcraft of the world.

 

Today there's blood and sorrow,

Where dire powers embrace;

But with the singing morrow

Comes the beauty of His face.


Page 86

Krishna's Coming

 

Around my heart I set gold trellis,

And hung the roof with filligree,

For Krishna of the myriad splendours

Was coming with his pageantry;

 

I wove a golden fairy-netting,

And worked it in with jewelry,

For Krishna of the shining joy-songs

Was coming in his pomp to me.

 

Ah, everything and everywhere

I decked with pearl and diamond lace,

With exquisite and quiet care 

To fashion a chamber for his Grace.

 

When all was ready, the fire bright,

Love's silent sacrificial flame,

I sat within its rapturous light

Awaiting him. And...yes, He came.


Page 87

A Voice

 

Should I be thought worthy to speak my prayer,

From midst these broken and imperfect things,

Where we are exiles — who were meant

for kings, —

I'd speak it on the shattered night's despair,

On the lone dark of thudding waters where

Dim sea-mews brood, unlit, with folded wings;

Or boldly as the innocent sparrow flings

Its heart on the dangerous widenesses of air:

 

Till through the splintered spaces of the earth,

A voice go forth informing every soul

With one deep beauty, with one passionate fire

Infusing all unto the Primal Whole;

Till through all sorrow struggle to their birth

The perfect worlds and skies of our Desire.


Page 88

Night and Unknowing

 

Night and unknowing:

first, the ignorance with its trooping, tripping joys,

small joys that gleam a promise of bliss and perish,

and much ignorant suffering — pain without meaning,

pain fruitless, the pain of matter, — futility. ...

And then frustration and unknowing yet meaninged pain,

lamentations and a quiet mourning of the spirit

for things unrealised,

pain of bewilderment, then a pain of promise,

but deeper yet

for the unconsciousness of spirit,

its faint lights and rights, its sleep, its numbness;

dark sorrow in the night, night out in the forest,

with snake-bite and prowling murder

and fear that kills;

trapping cruelties and unaware overtakings of the animal;

night in the gutters, with creatures of the slime,

with dirt, disease and sin,

night in the soul's home —

impotencies willed and unwilled....

And the endless silent weeping, the endless groping

in the night and unknowing.

And then the hint of dawn.

And yet unknowing. ...

Only a glow of promise behind the soul's pain,

a red joy-glimmer... and yet pain:

the pain of beauty and transient light,

of the soul's lack for the opening of purity,

of the unremoved screenings, uncleaned windows

and mirror;

the pain of beauty refracted, warped and passing,


Page 89

the pain of light dirt-sifted, dirt-reflected,

and, at last, the most bitter grief

of the soul's understanding

of its own slow annihilation.

 

And then the pause at the edge of dawn,

at the slow turning of the night into morning,

the slow returning of light.

The pause and return:

the golden knowledge and white new pureness,

the death of uncleannesses on the stagnant waters,

drying of weeds and rotten mosses, dying of death. ...

Infiltration of sunlight, translucencies,

loveliness of ray-dances in the open fields,

the forest-beast's retirement, the waking of man,

freshness and health and eternal radiance,

the beatitude of the new day.


Page 90

The Waiting

 

Now that the rivers have begun to flow

and the falls of gold from on high,

The centre of the sun begins to unseal;

We who have waited long begin to feel

the breath of Your spirit, we begin to know

the hour of the Descent is nigh.

 

No delusion this? Ah, Lord, do not delude us; say,

is the hope too quick, the bliss too green to drink

ungolden, untouched of the sun? Delay?...

Pause? think?...

The waiting is agony again.

O globe of silent pain,

bubble of the earth-foam, burst; win

to free faith, a new birth;

set free the will of the Word within

that incarnates God on earth.


Page 91

What was it?

 

Was it a smile in the blue radiant night?

— We climbed a stairway as into opening skies,

A-throb with strange pulsations, ancient ties

Of love and longing, and hidden deep delight;

Silent and tense we went, so still and white

The mind with inward power; no bright surmise

Nor dream nor trail of sunlit memories

Could ever know that ecstasy of sight.

 

What was it? Sovereign Beauty seated there,

Or Love incarnate pouring all its grace?

A marvellous Presence filling all the air

With sweetness so ineffable, awhile

Our souls enraptured in its pure embrace

Lay lost? — Or was it just one luminous smile?


Page 92

Alchemy

 

All my being turns to music

When I think of Thee;

Within each nerve-stream flows the honey

Of Thy felicity.

 

When I contemplate Thy being,

My mind's a glow of light;

Silence widens to the spheres,

I am gathered to Thy sight.

 

My heart I fling within Thy heart;

Strange beauty breaks above;

Beneath, around me, everything

Grows lovely with Thy love!


Page 93

Last Evening

 

Last evening when the skies in fury

Thundered over our dull repose,

And we quick-fastened all our shutters,

Quietly a thought arose:

 

How sometimes through an apprehension

Strange and awkward, we, unwise,

Have lost the gleam of things immortal

Passing across our fear-filled eyes.

 

How many flaming thoughts have vanished

Unknown, for brains were sealed up tight;

How many lovely truths eluded

Minds wrapped in comfortable night.

 

All beauty's lightnings split the heavens,

While we, safe home, crouch tucked away;

Truth's gold wrath rumbles through the darkness,

Our ears are plugged with terror's clay.

 

And so our hearts miss all the meanings,

All secrets delicate and deep;

The warriors win them, enter sunrise,

While we lie trembling or asleep.


Page 94

Replies

 

Earth is full of replies;

0 yearning soul, to all your lonely whys

An answer gleams against the heavens, afar,

A star.

 

Because you have heard

My pain within me like a wounded bird,

I trace the rainbow in the skies again

Through rain.

 

You have seen the plea 

Stay waiting in a heart that's wild and free;

But when it's dark, the bird must wish the sky

Good-bye.

 

The great nights heal

With sorrowed hush the breaking heart's appeal,

For through much sacrifice it should have grown

A stone.

 

We say we'll meet

Because the ancient hum of hounding feet

Still beats upon our lonesome tracks of dream

Its theme.

 

Look how the sea

Keeps yet in storm or peace its mystery,

And grateful for the wealth no words can plumb,

Is dumb.


Page 95

To Agni

 

O Fire of God, eater of the sacrifice,

Destroyer, raven up the rotting grave,

Consume the dead, the wood, the balming spice,

Spring forth and purify, illumine, save.

 

O thunder-bolt speed down, fall fast as fate,

Across the pitch-dark sky to the stony night,

Where all the murky, muddy pools stagnate,

O Grace of God, flash far your sun-delight.

 

O Love that burns, soul-piercing, flaming dart,

Lift high the singing sacrifice, above;

Within your red-gold rapture fold the heart,

Transmute both mind and body in your love.


Page 96

The Phoenix

 

The gold-blue bird is in the sun:

Silent and swift the white fires run

Down all the crystalled terraces;

But in the forest all lies dry,

Too frail to bear the blazing sky,

And no birds sing among the trees.

 

Only the red-green macaws sit

Pick-pecking at the Infinite,

Sullen or screaming to the blue;

The nest of incense, myrrh and spice

Has burnt up in the sacrifice

Both mother-bird and fledgling new...

 

Long twilights sweep across the land;

The thin trees leafless, sapless stand

With branches bare that skyward yearn;

The brown earth cracks to drink fresh grace,

The red-green macaws lift their face

And wait the golden bird's return.

 

The cycles of time move through the spheres,

The phoenix-fledgling slow appears

In the ashen nest where its mother lies;

All earth awaits the new-born bird,

The coming of the flaming Word,

Wings of renewal in the skies.


Page 97

A Gift of Grace

 

These simple little gifts of Grace

I put down only for Your sake;

For passing Time will soon efface

The memory of me and break

To dust the heart that thrilled to You,

The brain Your presence.made so bright,

And Silence flood out through and through

These vibrant pathways of delight.

 

Of nought will stay the faintest trace;

Nothing remains and all falls still;

Only this little gift of Grace

May praise You — if it is Your Will.


Page 98

The Clue

 

This is how the magic works:

Behind the screen of sense and thought

A strange unearthly beauty lurks,

Awaiting to be caught.

 

The hidden dream-lanes inward reach

To shining waters, caverned deep,

Beyond the pale release of speech,

In unknown tracts of sleep.

 

No clues? No tappings, plumbings might

Unseal those doors in Matter's wall;

Those secret fortresses of light

Only to self-giving fall.


Page 99

Alone

 

Walking alone, walking inside,

Where the radiant lane of power goes straight

Deep, deep within, I contemplate

Your image wherein all truths abide.

 

Silent the way, and pure and white;

The pressure of that ecstasy

Dissolves the being into light:

Alone with you, eternally.


Page 100

When Dreams Unfold...

 

When the long folded dreams unfold,

We know and love before we meet:

Because earth's shores are dark burnt gold

I have met You at the sunset feet;

 

White waters running from the wake

Of rising suns in endless stream,

I have drunk, and known your pureness slake

Me to the breaking of the dream...

 

Upon dark leaves each night is laid

The tender clearness of the dew;

When morning splendour, unafraid,

Takes it, then I'll be meeting You.

 

Love, just because your Beauty runs

Wild over muddy wastes and sands,

I press the glory of your suns

So close with eager burning hands.

 

And see, because the twilight's filled

With wing and song of homing birds,

My frightened sin shall yet be stilled

And find its shelter in your words.

 

So from my folded sleep unflake

Your lovelinesses, pleat by pleat;

O You who did the folding, break

In beauty through me, till we meet.


Page 101

The Spirit's Claim

 

...Where the pathways meet, we are one,

And where the pathways are different.

I hold the paradox to my heart and wait.

 

Let the strangeness grow within me

to silence and reconciliation.

Let me accept this fulfilment that has come.

 

Upon the lonely roads, where separation made me sing,

a new young loneliness grows to silence,

to the prelude of this fulfilment...

 

Your limbs and life are everywhere, O Beautiful:

All things are words, words grown suddenly rich

in meaning — puns and quibbles and symbols, —

the rose, the thorns, the tree and hill and sky...

Lo! how the spirit dances upon sense:

The meanings throng and tumble over each other

with sorrow and laughter and great rejoicing,

folding our comedies, our clear religions,

close, close, plane over plane.

Innumerable glories filter down the soul

and become flesh, become colour and sound

and scent;

The patterns of Your myriad moods pass through

the light,

and shining whiteness breaks upon the beautiful

calm heights of mountains.

I gather the colours which Your eyes have acknowledged,

and every lovely sound,

for the glory of articulation is Your first secret.


Page 102

I ask for the touch of pure things, cool water on my eyes,

the wind in my hair,

and leaves and flowers against the cheek,

and the bodies of those I love...

The triumphant surge of spirit claims all things,

Radiance builds into flesh and waits,

Till the tomb-stone is rolled back in the light of dawn

of a world's understanding,

and God in swift new change, the alchemy of creation,

refashions earth.


Page 103

Venturing out

 

Set the trembling lamp afloat

Upon the dark wild flood,

Set adrift the broken boat

Upon the seas of blood.

 

And if a little farther still

Across Time's prudent bar

It ventures out, maybe it will

Just land on the morning star.


Page 104

Old Lovely Faces

 

Old lovely faces which have made

Our young lives pure, our wild hearts strong,

We come across our sorrow's shade

To you, adream with twilight song.

 

Back to your holy, quiet light,

And soft caress of words that free,

The smiling peace of star-brows white

With inward, distant majesty.

 

Upon your stillness to lay our pain,

And vagrancies of trembling nerves,

Our broken dreams and clotted brain

Of wounded thoughts your balm preserves.

 

The work you gave with silent gift

Unmurmuring, unproud of heart,

Is now the halo in the drift

Of cloud that folds you high, apart.

 

Old faces, mute with memories

Of sorrows borne in deepening strain,

Pain-cleaned, as in a storm the trees

Are hallowed to the heart by rain.

 

Because your joy is sorrow-sprung,

Your quiet silences will keep

Gathered life's splinterings we flung

Away — and fold us back to sleep.


Page 105

Child of our Heart

 

Child of our heart, so beautiful, so bright,

With angel radiances bedecked so fair,

Flowers on your brow and stars within your hair,

What do you do in these black streets of night?

— These sunless cities reeking bale and blight,

Where houses breathe a foul and fetid air,

And bodies flaccid, cold, exhale despair,

Fester with putrid thought and crooked spite.

 

O lovely child, most beautiful, you roam

Joyous among these slums, these flabby hags,

Untouched — pure sun-drop, snow-drop,

honey-sweet;

Nor fear, nor weep, though strayed so far from home,

For you are Love, and in their midnight rags

All dark things know you, bend, and kiss

your feet.


Page 106

Your Word

 

Your Word comes singing to my soul

And passes over night's silent sea;

I cannot keep it or control

Or capture all it says to me.

 

But the deep caves resound with light,

The terraces of being flame,

And everywhere from depth to height

Reverberates your beauteous Name.

 

The earth a-tremble to the core

Bursts open its vast granite hold,

Releasing through its broken floor

Strange sacred fountains flowing gold.


Page 107

Brain-markets

 

Ah, will you call all crazy vendors

To markets of the cluttered brain,

Now giddy with magician splendours,

Now drawing from a dirty drain?

 

What will they buy, what will they sell,

Here in the world's exchange and mart?

Drive bargains hard for heaven or hell,

Lay dizzy prices on the heart?

 

Here throng the crowds of fairy dreams,

And jostling thoughts, insistent wills;

Desire's high-pitched voice here screams,

Black money flows for smuggled ills.

 

There's just one treasure worth your buying,

Beyond all splendours you may find,

Within the tumult and the crying —

The silence of the sunlit mind.


Page 108

Who were you?

 

What did you mean, O God, to me,

You whom the world's great scriptures quote?

— One sitting in lone majesty,

So agonisingly remote,

 

Not all my longing ever could reach

Or touch you; nor heart's deepest cry,

Nor any power of thought or speech

Pierce through those cold walls of your sky.

 

You might as well have been a Mask;

"Existence pure" or "Peace", maybe —

What do with these? I could but ask

Your wrath to blast my blasphemy.

 

But no; instead you left your throne,

As though you'd seen my anguished eyes,

And how senseless all my days had grown;

You rose at last and smashed your skies...

 

And so you took me from this hell

Of pained confusion's soot and smoke;

Upon my ways your beauty fell,

And all my heart to you awoke.

 

Had you not come, O Love Divine,

With human face and hands and feet,

What would have been this life of mine,

What meaning made its moments sweet?

 

Now all with your rich love is filled,

And every thought's a flame of rose,

 And every breath a joy distilled. ...

— But your deep sacrifice who knows?


Page 109

Beyond the Nights

 

O Sun, beyond the silent nights

of loneliness,

Illume the pallid wandering sight's

groping distress.

 

Sharp spears of light, fire-rods swift leap

down darkness' brain,

Pierce through the heavy clouds of sleep,

bring inward rain.

 

Stretch forth Your hand of power and take

my fumbling hand;

Hold fast till the child-heart awake

and understand.


Page 110

New Radiance

 

...And look, see all:

The violet lights that play

Upon the hills of yesterday;

And today's pink-white dawn,

Opening of all roses.

 

But ever onward stream

the golden lights of a future day:

shafts of power piercing to the earth's core,

vertical descent of divinity

deep, far and deep, into earth's core:

shells of the sun exploding

over the nights of earth,

new radiance blasting dead clay.

 

Broken matter bespatters the stars,

The nights in fury arise,

becloud the skies.

Only the hidden sun-power's pressure,

only earth's humble heart of gathering gravitation,

silently, invisibly save.

All lies quiet at last.

 

The black blind ponies of night's deep-dug mines

stir and neigh to the horses of the sun...

Light enters quietly the beating heart of the dark,

liberating light, primeval — pristine purification

moving in subterranean waters;

The ignorant crust

of the god-seed cracks.

Upon the beauty of the shining lakes of peace

is born the Red Lotus.


Page 111

Whom the Spirit Seeks

 

Myriads of worlds crash in our hearts each day,

Yet in strange ocean-founts renewed they rise,

Grow vast in understanding as the skies,

Though hatreds rage and comrade-souls betray.

And still through nights of peril and dismay,

The dark suns' war, the cosmic agonies,

To the clear heart's lone cry something replies,

The voice of One who calls all hearts away...

 

One whom the spirit seeks through many births,

Through storm-break, heart-break, howling winds

of doom

In forests passion-black, wastes of life's mire,

Deserts and debris, ruins of ancient earths;

— One who, unseen, leads her through death and gloom

Pathfinder, Friend, the Guardian of her Fire.


Page 112

Without You

 

In this night of passing shadows,

This phantom world of gleams untrue,

And labyrinths and crooked pathways,

How would I manage without You?

 

I cannot take a step in music,

Cannot climb my daily stair,

Or think or move to any purpose

But because You are always there.

 

How strangely helpless is my being

Without You; not a turn I take,

Or aught I do can issue rightly,

If it be not for Your sake.

 

What is this I? a nought, a silence,

A shadow in a world of shades,

Unreal like the glimmering figures

That walk the wall in masquerades.


Page 113

The Rune Within

 

Listen in the silent night:

There's a voice within your dream;

When the phantom jazz takes flight,

You will hear the singing stream:

 

The melody of some new morn,

Sun-Word of the coming Birth,

The mantra of the worlds unborn,

A rune that sings beneath the earth.


Page 114

Liberation

 

A hundred sweet tunes throng the heart

One moment, then as fast depart:

Dark silence surges over the soul,

And thoughts and feelings swiftly roll

Up into one fire-knot, all pure,

And plunge down to the being's core,

Lost in its strange black unlit seas,

Plumbing their age-held mysteries.

The hidden caves its power unlocks:

Blue flutings issue from the rocks

Of Night; the Fire liberates

All prisoned angels, breaks the gates.

 

— The blind trance passes, the waters part,

New melodies well in the heart.


Page 115

Promise

 

When earth's dream-colours are gone,

And you have kept the vow,

Silently I shall come and stud

The blue stars on your brow.

 

Through the temple will run a murmur,

A noise of waters that roll,

And in the clean white air a word

Will move across your soul.

 

The shining fires will weave for you

A raiment of golden skill;

For you have burnt your thought out

On the altar of my Will.

 

In the shimmering hour of morning

When beauty is over the land,

I'll keep my word and quietly come,

And you will understand.


Page 116

Through Unknown Tracks

 

How many veils the mind has woven

Across your image in my heart;

Should I go straight down through that passage

They would but wall me far apart,

 

And leave me fumbling blind in darkness...

— So, brood I, could I close my eyes

And plunge through unknown tracks, I'd capture

You from behind as by surprise,

 

And be within your radiant presence,

More safe-locked in your arms and sure,

For all the walls the mind has put up

Against the other entrance-door.


Page 117

World-dust

 

Listen: they taught me to believe a lie,

They put the consciousness of sin within

My heart, and I believed that it was sin

And so destroyed my dedication; I

Shrunk down the dark and thought I should deny

Henceforth Your presence, break our bond of kin,

Swiftly unweave the quiet discipline

Which held us, each to each, in purity.

The shadow of my earth-love ever came

Between us; shame-clots on my limbs and stain

Of world-dust on my lips burnt sharp like flame,

And everywhere Your glory cut me through:

Sin-sapped I could not see beyond my pain

That the Earth and I, being yours, were as

pure as You.


Page 118

Cities of Night

 

Last night we strayed into the lands of Night,

Cities of death, where in the howling street

Men walk wolf-eyed, dim evil-eyed, and cheat

The mind to images of ghastly sight.

Wildly they grope for power, and bite and fight,

And kill the heart with passion's poisoned sweet,

Burn black the lips with falsehood and deceit,

Pollute and desecrate the soul's delight.

 

The shapes of all things cruel, dark, impure,

Are gathered there in horrid slums of shame,

And over all that filth, Night's veiling soot;

Disdain, distress, despair fill every core

Of being; wondering we asked, "Who is to blame,

Whence fall the seeds that yield such hellish fruit?'


Page 119

Light that Burns

 

What should we do with Heaven's light

If it must wound us so?

How sharp its rods and lashes smite,

We'd rather hide below

 

The thick warm layers of our earth,

Soft blanketed as once,

And cradled darkly as at birth

In swathes of ignorance.

 

And yet within us something cries

For that white touch which burns,

An anguish in our blackest lies

To feel that Truth-fire yearns.


Page 120

In Blind Dark

 

How can we see who have no vision pure

To look behind the earth's and body's veil?

Will the fire-form prepared within assure

Duration of that mould of flesh so frail?

 

A thousand murmurs darken over the cold

Still clay; and whispering doubts creep through

the air;

Do we forget the promise given of old?

Why do we tremble so, deny, despair?

 

The surging darkness from the lairs of night

Blinds all our wits; the black stone mind of fear

Has neither loving trust nor any sight,

And mud-blocked, buzzing loud, the ear cannot hear.

 

What do we do? We sacrifice to doom

Our faith, our love — our living heart entomb.


Page 121

The Only Way

 

Do not cross the ancient bridgeway,

Lest your pale feet bleed;

So sharp, so fine the razor's edging,

White purity we need.

There's but one way to make the journey,

Without the abysmal slide;

Let Grace Herself become the crossing,

And Love Divine your guide.

 

Nor venture lone the ancient stairway

To reach that world of gold;

These rough steps rise to dizzy spaces,

Your feet will lose their hold.

No man may scale this giddy skyway,

Alone and pure of pride;

Let Grace Herself become the climbing,

And Love Divine your guide.


Page 122

Winds of Sense

 

All the stupid winds of sense

Rush their gates in ceaseless flow,

To reach the four directions whence

The universal life-breaths blow;

 

And passion-haunted, passion-roused,

Storm through the world in idiot glee,

In wrecking restlessness unhoused

And falling in the nether sea.

 

From there in frantic shapes again

They rise and cloud the heart and mind;

Till dark delirium racks the brain

And black fires turn the vision blind.

 

The wise of soul all close the gates,

And fasten them against that night;

The fool of life but dissipates

The beauty of his Love's delight.


Page 123

Beyond the Veilings

 

Far behind the senseless dustings

Every day accumulates,

Rags of thoughts and shreds of willings

Tattered by our darkened fates,

 

Spinning, weaving, shuttling through

Old cobwebs of our Karmic rooms,

Arachne impudences hung

Upon the golden spirit's looms;

 

— Far behind those dusty veilings,

Untouched, unseen, a Presence dwells,

A purity that heals all being,

The secret Word within our spells.


Page 124

You Alone

 

Dearest, it is always the same:

Through every minute of the day

You come: your voice, your words, your Name,

In everything I hear or say.

 

And everywhere, and every time,

It's You; strange faces in the streets

Are You, strange words within my rhyme

With unknown purpose count your beats.

 

Why do You haunt me, taunt me so?

Must every thought I think be split

To gather You, before it grow

True and whole in the infinite?

 

I wrap my cracking wits with care

In words grown unecstatic, sane;

I fold You in, all unaware,

Until You learn to share my pain...

 

O dearest, make me understand

This interplay of You and me:

This separation, perfect-planned,

This meeting's perfect mockery.


Page 125

The Thorns

 

The rose is sleeping amid the thorns,

The thorns are preening points,

Ready to meet the Gatherer

An old world-law anoints.

 

Foul and fair within the air

Give no sure sunlight clue;

Feign to be the arbiter,

And they will punish you.

 

Feign to be the Chosen One,

— Caught in the traps they lay,

You'll see the evil mockeries,

And wither on the way.

 

Only Love's hands may take and wake,

As ready for the thorn. ...

— But will the beauty compensate

The blood, the flesh that's torn?


Page 126

Open Your Gates

 

Open Your gates of eternal peace,

Compassion divine;

Let the tired soul now find release

Within Your shrine.

 

Aeons of dark have fallen upon it,

Burden of night;

Time has snatched a wing and torn it,

Dust dimmed its sight.

 

Earth's layers have crusted around its breath,

Choked up its life:

Pale ghosts of pain, hauntings of death,

Agony, strife...

 

O open the prison-bars, set free

The yearning flame;

Open the doors of eternity

In Your Love's Name.


Page 127

O Dire Magician

 

O dire Magician, how long will you keep

This spirit pegged in rough-hewn stone or tree,

Witch-wisdoms jeering at its agony

And uncouth passions stalking it in sleep?

— Are you then deaf? Do you not hear it weep

Within dark rocks, and struggling to be free?

The wood imps titter and tease in mockery...

Release it, Lord, unweave the midnight deep.

 

Or is this then your vaunted magic show,

Or is some sacred Mystery being played?

— 'The isle is full of voices', in the air

Whispers of an unearthly beauty flow,

And hidden meanings sweet and secrets rare

Await the passing of the masquerade.


Page 128

Stone-dead

 

In the heart of the rockhold imprisoned,

In the depth of the midnight cave,

I have spent these long years of anguish,

Stretching arms to you vainly to save.

 

The darkness has only grown deeper,

The dryness has burnt up my eyes;

If the being were cleft asunder,

From the dead stone no streams would arise.

 

A weight as of granite ages

Is upon me, and never a gleam

Do you send of your beauty or sweetness —

Not even by way of a dream.

 

Yet dim-groping within this mountain,

Still seeking the golden springs,

Sometimes I have thought maybe only

It is You, folding me 'neath your wings.


Page 129

Charity

 

Inert and senseless flow on

Sin's years, dark as they came;

And the promptings of Your spirit

Are wasted in my shame.

 

The reasons and the madness

That You would meet and dole,

The potencies and prayers,

Are bargains of the soul.

 

Nor question, cry or cunning,

Could now avail my pain;

Would a myriad million Ganges

Now wash me clean again?

 

When marketings are over,

Your charities unfold,

And touch the bowls of beggars,

And fill them with Your gold.


Page 130

Let me come back

 

Now if the debt is paid, the piled arrears

Of ancient follies strung on the Karmic chain,

Let me come back, let white light break again

Through these thick walls, and Agni's flame-blades pierce

The dead hard blocks. Burn up the tears, the fears,

Restore the purity of heart and brain,

Release the yearning spirit pent in pain,

And cleanse the clots of all the wounded years.

 

Let me come back. Annul the black decree,

The brand upon my soul burnt by your Will,

The being's labour in the fields of night.

Is not the exile over? How long still

Must I thus linger? Is it fair or right?

— Let me come back to you. Else, come to me.


Page 131

All's Over

 

All's over. Is the last word said?

Ah, isn't there some melody

So magic-sweet it wakes the dead,

With spells of old from across the sea?

 

Or is there not some faerie spring

Of sun-charged waters, hidden deep

Within our hill, whose touch can bring

Life once again to those who sleep?

 

We knew once of a sacred flame

Burning in midnight caves, whose kiss

Of ardour had the power to claim

The dead back from the dark abyss.

 

Where is that fire, that fount, that spell?

And whose the robe of purity

To find the sealed cave 'neath the hill,

To walk upon that unknown sea?


Page 132

And Why?

 

You tell me you deceive, the more to grow

In joy of love, more wholly, deeply one;

What reason's this? You've veiled your

Presence's sun

And flung the night upon me, black with woe.

What is your Will, your game, I do not know;

The darkness thickens round me, dank and dun,

No more through me your sweet bright waters run,

And long extinguished is the heart's white glow.

 

And why, and why? I ask again, again.

Do you not sense how hard it is for me?

How long must I endure? or must I see

You even in this night, here feel you close

And warm and beautiful midst this sharp pain,

And this dark world your rapture's radiant rose?


Page 133

Is it not time?

 

Is it not time? Insistent voices call.

I cannot breathe. Open the sealed up gates.

Oh, hasten now, the fainting spirit waits,

Release it, Lord, before it swoon and fall.

A lifetime spent in battering down the wall!

Exhaustion, agony, the mind's debates,

Or wild, unprofitable passion's spates,

And wasted wrestling with black storm and squall.

 

I see, nothing I do can ever avail;

This helplessness is all I offer You,

This death, this anguish, this blank faceless face;

If there's no key, then speak and blast the jail,

Or melt the walls to fire, that passing through

The heart be gathered to Your heart of Grace.


Page 134

Sudden Change

 

The heart sits blank in utter darkness

Through days and nights of idiocy,

Lonely and still, a vacant desert,

A stone's insensibility...

 

When sudden through the self's vast spaces

The shining worlds begin to move,

Trailing their moons and starry graces

Across the fields of heavenly love;

 

And suddenly the inner deeps

Vault outward to infinity,

And all the far blue heaven leaps

And merges in the heart's wide sea.


Page 135

Enchantment

 

A brief pure moment's ecstasy,

Arrows of singing flame,

Within the heart's white silence free

The music of Thy name.

 

O wizard Love, Enchanter, Thou,

Unweave the darkness, place

Thy stars of peace upon my brow,

Thy sun-truth on my face.


Page 136

The Dark Phase

 

Year after year you sealed up every door

And locked us out in endless utter night;

And night was on our souls, we could not fight

The ancient shades, the subterranean lure.

Deeper each day we sank into the core

Of abysmal ill, where blows no breath of light,

No wandering breeze of hope or promise bright

Redeems the heart, no gleams of faith assure.

 

Only your love's gold warmth lay somewhere still

Hid close within our dark; and so we knew

The hand of your indomitable Will

Upon us; knew at last, at last let go...

And suddenly the midnight opened, through

Those dead rocks springs of light began to flow.


Page 137

The Heart-stone

 

Entombed in pitiless dark the years move slow;

God knows we're taught to die! in agony

The whirlpool mind throws up unceasingly

The same old idiocies stored far below.

The heart's a stone; could love's rose streamlets flow

From mouths of rock and sand? could music be

Found in the burial-place of memory?

— It's death by inches, as was said long ago.

 

And yet not death; for still all through the night

A strange breath passes down the tunnelled hill;

And deep within the heart-stone burns a light,

A jewel-flame; the sarcophagi hold

A million suns; the tomb-robbers' blackest skill

Could not break through and steal this sacred gold.


Page 138

The Ordinance

 

Your hands once wrote their potent will

Upon my brow of trance;

The fire-script burns and glimmers still,

A dire ordinance.

 

It bids me to explore the night,

(For the day's tasks are done),

Go through the rock-doors and ignite

Down there the Fire, the Sun.

 

But I have neither strength nor skill,

And my frail eyes cannot see.

Are You then there? is it Your will?

Where will I find the key?

 

Will night's black scroll be ever unfurled?

The music of the Word,

The meaning of the hidden world

Within us ever be heard?


Page 139

Chinese Song

(God to the soul)

 

My friend of joy,

Why do you never let me row?

Or, you await, perhaps, the breaking of the oar?

When it will break, I'll part the waters

With skill of mine own arm;

For we two must decoy

The deep old river-god.

 

Where is the shore?

The autumn moon comes arm in arm

With his fair daughters:

You want the moon to think

You're rowing, but I think

The little ones yet know

That it is I.


Page 140

Time's Battle

 

I saw night's death-cave yawning

In writhing pains,

And blood of the dragon flowing

Within earth's veins;

 

And then the blue light flashing,

Rocks split apart,

And the great gold sun deep sinking

In the storm's dark heart.

 

In subterrene fearful spaces

Of poison fume,

The dragon's secret dwelling

Black fires illume,

 

The golden god descended

In armoured light,

Time's direst battle daring

Within the night.


Page 141

Life's Riddle

 

One lined the ominous shadows

With sunlight of the soul,

And poured the honey moon-wine

Into this clayey bowl;

 

With filaments of silver

Knotted up joy and pain,

In nets of gleaming wonder

Dream-veiled the seer-eyed brain.

 

A mystery and magic

Are woven everywhere,

Within us and around us,

Entangled in earth's air:

 

The shadows and the sunlight,

The mystic wine and mud,

Life's purity and passion

All run within our blood.

 

We cross Time's riddling waters

Towards prophetic seas,

Voices of deep assurance

Surging from vasts of peace.


Page 142

O Silent Love

 

O silent Love, where your pure footsteps tread,

The paths of darkness break open in delight;

Light floods the clotted anguish of the dead,

Washes the ancient karmic vaults of night.

 

Pass soft: the ether's a-quiver with stars and flowers,

And fires burn high in caverns broken and old;

The earth lies tranced with beauty, far sun-powers

Sweep vibrant through the spaces, winged with gold.


Page 143

Figures of Light

 

Consider how behind the darkness

Ever those wondrous figures gleam,

All clothed in light and tender beauty,

And haunt us in the paths of dream.

 

Radiant with love and silent wisdom,

They move within our hearts and minds,

Sustain and sanctify our being,

And cut the knots our Karma binds.

 

Eternal strength, eternal patience,

Carry our stumblings through earth's night;

Soft hands of Grace and deep compassion

Open the gateways of delight.


Page 144

Put off that Mask

 

Put off that mask of formal hue,

And let your secret radiance shine,

Unhood the divinity in you,

The sweetness of the heart divine.

 

Why bury all that wealth of grace

Beneath the veneer of a pose,

Is not the face of love your face,

Is not your truth a smiling rose?

 

That icy look, sharp lines show clear

Unlovely feelings flowing unsmooth,

Dark shadows which make you appear

What you are not in your deep truth.

 

Ah! all the worlds would dance delight,

Should your soul's hidden sun arise;

The shades of pain would take their flight,

And singing raptures throng the skies.


Page 145

No Word

 

Across the unmeaning spaces, clean-built by

Custom's hand,

Whose laws we all abide by, although we understand

Their tricks to keep us lonely, their traps to snare our joys,

— Across those empty spaces cries forth the spirit-voice.

 

Against the light our hearts are pure, yet shadows of

their sin

Are over our words, ambiguous words, that hurt the

thought within;

And so they try to break our truth, to hold our

faiths apart,

To crush the music from our soul, the sweetness from

our heart.

But we shall still keep all things bright, be

silence's votaries,

Ours shall be the dumb stars' song, the hush of

timeless seas,

And no word move between our souls lest falseness

yet increase,

No word to stain the voiceless depths of purity and peace.


Page 146

Across the River

 

Shall we go across the river?

Ah, this side or the other side,

What does it matter? here, hereafter?

Where do the friends of God abide?

 

Vertical flows the river of light

Straight down to midnight caverns dark,

And all the souls go down the flow,

Both blazing sun and glow-worm spark.

 

All go down to the sunless deeps,

The waters of stupendous night,

Folding within the magic threads

That weave back to the primal height.

 

They cross, re-cross, arise and sink,

And lost and found still seek and hide;

The wheel moves round, and everywhere,

Here too, the friends of God abide.


Page 147

Pure Rose

 

Press the heart-bell, call the power,

Silence enters in this hour.

Do not break the wisdom-chain

With the hammers of the brain.

Stilled upon the midnight minute

Hold all Timelessness within it.

 

Pure rose, vibrant with soft love-light,

Among the thickets of the night,

A jewel-lamp, a sun, a flower,

A well of fragrance, spell of power;

Source of all the energies

That move within life's rolling seas,

The myriad forces that unroll

The vast white spaces of the soul.


Page 148

Your Coming

 

Laughter of light,

Laughter of love,

Through spaces of stillness

Break forth above.

 

I know you are coming.

For everywhere

Reverberates Your Name

Through earth and air...

 

In bud and blossom,

In star and tree,

Intense and vibrant

Your melody.

 

And I know you are here,

Deep, deep within;

For all the outer spaces

Have just caved in.


Page 149

Bird-song

 

Deep within the wells of being

Floats an image of the sun;

And there a bird sits singing, singing,

Eternally, alone.

 

A hush immense walls up the song

In crystal purity;

And Silence sentinels its power,

Its vast infinity.

 

So deep, so rich, the spirit-rune,

The inner spaces shine,

World after world unfolds in light

And loveliness divine.


Page 150

"Willing"

 

Beloved, I am tired of thinking,

I put me in your hand,

If it's your will I'll never

More try to understand.

 

But let me love you always,

Or I shall die, my dear;

And if our wills don't tally,

Mine 'will' be yours, I fear.


Page 151

When will it end?

 

When will this poor drama end?

The tired heart begins to crack;

How long to play on and pretend

When Truth is ever calling back?

 

Back home to worlds beyond this show,

To arms of wondrous tenderness,

And eyes that understand and know,

And a smile the very soul's caress.

 

Is it not time to go home still,

And leave this pageantry and masque?

What is the naked spirit's will,

What does its deepest longing ask?

 

Oh, just to put by everything,

Each single thing that holds apart,

And quietly merge with all who cling

In rapture to that loving Heart.


Page 152

Destinies

 

A palace of destinies we build

Upon the burning sands,

With crystalled repercussions filled

By Time, who understands

 

How all things pass upon the earth,

As waters flow away,

From life to life, and birth to birth,

In endless roundelay;

 

And turn and pause and turn again

Upon the curves of Fate,

Unwinding still old Karma's chain,

Striving to abrogate

 

The aeonic bonds, the Law's control,

In vain — till Grace sets free

The springs of Love upon the soul,

And Will breaks destiny.


Page 153

Poets

 

Sometimes I think how strangely rhyme

The oddest words with words sublime:

Today he said, "X shows such malice..."

Before me moved that shining Chalice

Touched by those lips divine that spoke

Of love. And as Y fumed there broke

From his sore wound, "May every curse..."

I heard it inly rhyme with "verse",

Thought what my friends, the poets, would say:

"Verse is a curse", they'd grant, "all day

We have no quiet any more,

But silly rhymes will pour and pour

Into us, till mad with all that fizz

We perpetrate stupidities

Such as no prophet would prescribe...

Should you want wisdom, shun our tribe."

 

— That is my friends', the poets' lay;

God knows they mean not what they say!


Page 154

For the Dead

 

Those who are dead — the swift and strong,

Free riders of the wind,

Have gone, as beautiful as song

And left their death behind.

 

Left it to us; and the wild pride

Of air which knew their breath.

And we must think our earth enskied

And lovelier for their death!...

 

It should be so; yet foolishly

We weep that they are gone.

They took all Beauty on the sly,

All secret battles won.

 

"Because lives drop like petals, they

Can't but be beautiful",

Insists the breeze in mock dismay,

Preaching its sweeping rule.

 

Yet it is true, beyond Death's bar

We roamed as children roam;

They had to die for us, afar,

To bring their beauty home.

 

But all is empty now, so we

Must make our heart's great lie

A burning ground, and let the free

Dead dance there when they die.


Page 155

Our Choice

 

When the words of Knowledge come,

We stuff our ears with jazz and pop,

And listen to guitar and drum;

With folly's cotton-wool we stop

The songs within us, and rejoice

Over our modern uncouth choice.

 

And often when a seer deep

Comes by some wisdom to impart,

We choke the air with banter cheap,

And suffocate the waiting heart;

And think how very cleverly

We've shut out immortality.

 

This is the way our world goes round,

Full speed in giddy pomp and show;

Our ignorance remains profound,

While we believe and boast we know.

God knows! we choose the deepest hole,

To break our neck or wreck our soul.


Page 156

Of Pomps

 

Lord God, we've had enough

Of pomps and pageants old,

And all the gilded stuff

That's passed off as Your gold —

 

The flight of airy brains

That spin out dreams on dreams,

Where not a thought restrains

Pink passion's gushing streams.

 

How long shall we endure

This masquerading show?

Big words, rich words that pour

In senseless, rhymeless flow,

 

Without the least control

Of inward powers of light,

As though there were no soul

Behind what men must write.


Page 157

Two Words

 

Fold not your speech in wandering cloaks

That float upon the winds and sigh,

Their liberty is but a hoax,

And false, wild freedoms murmuring die.

 

Tell not your tale to busy ears

That hum with drum and mandolin,

But only when the deep heart hears,

Allow your word to trickle in.

 

Two words are there: one's the penned scroll

And floral manuscript men see;

The other burns within the soul,

A fire of God, an alchemy.

 

The scriptures of the world lie writ

Within our vaults, unseen, unheard;

And still Truth's oracle must sit

In caverns dark to speak her Word.


Page 158

To a "Modern" Poet

 

Consider, friend, your strange new art:

The giddy babel, the words' dark pall;

Consider the towering tragic wall

You build between a heart and heart.

 

Clever, cunning, you close the doors,

And shut a mad beast in the den;

The tongues of flame, sun-speech of men,

You change to grovelling moans and roars.

 

Uncogent babbling, whim absurd,

With mockery your pages fill;

The watching soul has but one will;

To hear the one Eternal Word:

 

When through each image, symbol, sound,

Silence and speech weave endlessly

A faultless work of filigree,

The patterns of a Truth profound.


Page 159

One Pure Word

 

I would not speak the speech of mortals,

When I would speak with Thee;

Our words are dim and shadowy portals

That veil sincerity.

 

I would not — yet the speech of gods

Is far beyond my reach;

— Wherein the vibrant truth-light fills

Dark lacks of human speech.

 

The darkness breaks up all we say,

One thought splits up another;

Alone among the splints of words

Gleams one pure love-word: "Mother".

 

On this one word I hang my song,

My life, my soul, my all:

The world's night swallows everything,

I let the silence fall

 

Around my words; I know Thy Grace,

Know Thy compassion sweet

Gather the broken song of love

I laid before Thy feet.


Page 160

Beyond the Word

 

Beyond the wordiness of the word,

Beyond its pomp and show,

Where the crystal meaning sings a bird

On hills of truth, I'd go.

 

I'm tired of all this trumpery,

Fine phrases void of heart,

Vain peacockings of majesty,

The God-king's regal art.

 

O sweet beloved simplicity,

White wisdom of the soul,

Your purifying radiance free

To pass across my scroll.

 

O Word of God, immaculate,

From silences deep heard,

From inward pureness liberate

In me the truth-born word.


Page 161

Memories

 

Sometimes I wonder what voices speak

Within the strains that come to us;

Perhaps a chorus from the Greek,

Perhaps some echo mysterious

 

Of melodies of Spain or France,

Or lilt of English country-song;

Faint rhythms of an Indian dance;

— To whom do all these tunes belong?

 

The rivers of far ages flow

With a thousand muffled murmurings

To subterranean wells below,

From where our inner fountain springs.

 

The dreams of many by-gone earths

Mingle within our memories,

And memories of other births,

And life in other realms than these.

 

So charged each word with inward stress

Reverberates from caverns deep,

And in the silent heart's recess

Its folded meanings rise in sleep.


Page 162

Festival

 

The heart has split up into two,

Between the blue and blue;

The skies flow in and all the seas,

The stars and birds and trees;

And silent, far-world memories

Drift in upon the breeze...

 

The ancient karmic destinies

Dissolve their fixed decrees;

The sun's gold pours, the moon-wine flows

From caverns of the rose;

Luminous globes hang everywhere

Within its freedom's air,

Bright filaments of fire enlace

Its interstellar space,

And visions lure its flames above

To wondrous worlds of love.


Page 163

The Heart took Wings

 

The heart took wings of radiant things

And flew to Him, her Lord;

The night-watch shook in agony,

But could not wield his sword;

The gaoler black raised frantic arms,

But could not speak a word.

 

She flew past all the towers of dark;

The sentinels asleep,

Stone-still like Rodin's "Thinker" sat,

Brooding upon the deep;

The elemental purple winds

Drew in their breath to weep.

 

The lanterns in the questioning streets

Zig-zagged across the earth,

In crazy ecstasy went out,

Self-shattered in their mirth;

Fragmented rose to stars and danced

Attendant on her birth.

 

She reached at last those nestling hands,

Her haven of rapturous peace;

He smiled: "I drugged those 'blackguards' well;

How did you find the keys?"

Then whispered, "Go, your Mother waits

To take you on Her knees."


Page 164

Every Form

 

Over all the earth and sky

Golden gifts of beauty lie;

Did you see the lovely Hand

That scattered over sea and land

Forms of rich beatitude,

Mirroring in every mood

Of line and hue and delicate tone

Mysteries of worlds unknown?

Did you see the flaming Heart

Infinity's white doorways part,

Pouring out the stars and suns

And the fiery light that runs

From vale to peak and over the hill,

— Fiat of His mighty Will.

Over all the sky and earth,

Innumerable sparks of mirth;

Over all the lands and seas,

Ineffable sweet melodies.

And every flash and every glow

Is He Himself, if we would know;

And every form and every line,

Is in itself the Word divine.


Page 165

Awaiting Orders

 

Lord, don't you see this state of mind,

The chaos dancing in the brain?

Mete out your sunshine to the blind,

From freeing floods of light, refrain.

 

How shall this being hold the flow,

The throng of words and melodies

That pour and pour non-stop and grow

A whirlpool in the inner seas?

 

The body's breathless with the power,

Life shaken longs to sit apart;

But there's betrayal in this hour,

A black-out in the offered heart.

 

... I do not know, Lord, your Will stands.

Order the work that's to be done;

For all the world is in your hands,

Both chaos and the dancing sun.


Page 166

Streamlets

 

Lord, how bright the waters flow,

Shimmering silver, sparkling gold,

Let Your mercy now bestow

A power within the heart to hold

 

Some streamlets of that ecstasy

Which cleans the being through and through,

And with its inmost light sets free

My soul to swiftly come to You.


Page 167

Within the Darkness

 

Everywhere in the depths of things

A sacred river runs,

A welling music ever sings

Of strange and buried suns...

 

Farther and deeper down Time's dance

The ancient waters flow,

Cold stony law-towers swoon in trance,

Dead orders whirl in woe;

 

Life's lavas burst, fierce fire-flakes fly,

The fettered Dragon, free,

In one leap swallows up the sky

And sinks back in the sea.

 

The age-old world-stairs rock and crash,

Far-flung in baleful blight;

The rising dragon-waters smash

Mind's pillared halls of light.

 

Primeval darkness holds all things,

Numb lie all memories;

But deep within, the Spirit sings

The myriad suns' release.


Page 168

Another Sacrifice

 

Pour the sun-world's brightest wine

Into the deepest holes of night;

Darkness drinks as Titans dine,

With giant mouth and giant might.

 

The strongest liquors of the skies

Will quench not those immense desires,

Abysmal hungerings that rise

From the primeval raging fires.

 

They ask another sacrifice:

Not solar wine but blood's the fee;

So Love Divine must pay the price

In mortal body's agony.


Page 169

So Far the Days

 

So far the days when you were among us here,

And spoke and walked with us; such beauty filled

Our lives, and every fibre of being thrilled

Ecstatic at your touch, so warm, so near.

How far those days; and since then, year on year

Has passed, and all the outer sense is stilled,

And every vanity and joy we willed

Broken apart, and cracked its dry veneer.

— Slowly you drove us inward, there to find

Your love and Presence in the heart's abyss,

Deep down within the wells of light and bliss,

Where all is for ever true, for ever sure,

Where neither Space nor passing Time can bind,

And we are one with You for ever more.


Page 170

What Word of Fire

 

What word of fire, Goddess, what white spell,

Swift-soaring upwards through these silent skies,

May reach those worlds of splendour and surprise,

Your home of love where all life's meanings dwell?

Had we the purity we could compel

You to come down to us; had we the eyes

To see those veiled ineffable secrecies,

The mystery of your being, there would well

Within our hearts such inward power, we'd grow

To utter loveliness and be with you,

Free from the anguish of this senseless show,

Free from the fiery rounds of death and birth,

For ever in your sweetness fashioned anew,

Till, Lady, you once more descend to earth.


Page 171

There is No Question

 

There is no question; one stark fact remains:

What she had promised to do she has done.

If men grope blindly, does it mean the sun

Illumines not their pathways and their plains?

Why! her love's Sun has kissed even the drains

Of our desires, has drunk the vapours dun

Of guttered falsehood where night's waters run.

What hasn't she done? If in our brains and veins

The Fire still burns low, it is best we seal

Our stupid lips and roll ourselves to sleep...

She called the brave with all their faith to leap

Into those dangerous depths her heart explored,

Daring the unknown darkness to reveal

The flame-gold body that must house the Lord.


Page 172

Darshan Day

 

Are these but vacant thrones or are you there

As once of old, when Love resplendent filled

All hearts with glory, and pure light distilled

The essences of beauty in the air?

In silent earnestness we wait and stare,

Empty of vision, in dream-darkness chilled,

Where vague imaginings gather and gild

Pale hopes hanging on nails of sharp despair.

— Oh, are you there? Heart after heart still cries

The question, as the cold procession winds

Past; but through the black pain burst sparked replies:

And some, rapt high, see splendid forms divine,

Another, swiftly swirling inward finds

You seated, lovely, in his own pure shrine.


Page 173

Epiphany

 

Behold, the Timeless now through all Time shines,

Resplendent in each thought and act and thing;

The earth and heavens with His Presence ring,

And every form enfolds Him in its lines.

All grows to wondrous beauty, shapes and signs

Reveal the Light's mysterious fashioning,

From rock and rock the solar waters spring,

The sun-gold flood no earth-born strength confines.

 

Once long ago seers spoke of alchemy,

The mystic stone that can transmute to gold,

The mystic wine of life. Now in this hour

Of benedictions, hour eternal, we

Witness fulfilled the promises of old,

The glory of Love's sacrificial power.


Page 174

All's Well

 

There's but one deed to celebrate,

The breaking of the Laws of Fate:

Death burnt upon that wondrous pyre

Built by Love's sacrificial fire.

 

There's but one image to enshrine,

The beauty of that Love divine:

The radiant gold within those eyes,

From suns in far eternities.

 

And for the rest — there's naught to say.

All's well, because She walked our way,

And touched our dust: each thing's a flame,

Each atom pulsates with Her Name.


Page 175









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