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King Manu in the former ages of the world, when the Arctic continent still subsisted, seeks knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who after long baffling him with conflicting side- lights of the knowledge, reveals to him what it chiefly concerns man to know.
MANU Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old Art slumbering, void Of sense or motion, for in the spirit’s hold Of unalloyed Immortal bliss thou dreamst protected! Deep Let my voice glide Into thy dumb retreat and break thy sleep Abysmal. Hear! The frozen snows that heap thy giant bed Ice-cold and clear, The chill and desert heavens above thee spread Vast, austere, Are not so sharp but that thy warm limbs brook Their bitter breath, Are not so wide as thy immense outlook On life and death: Their vacancy thy silent mind and bright Outmeasureth. But ours are blindly active and thy light We have forgone.
RISHI Who art thou, warrior armed gloriously Like the sun? Thy gait is as an empire and thine eye Dominion.
Page – 220 MANU King Manu, of the Aryan peoples lord, Greets thee, Sage.
RISHI I know thee, King, earth to whose sleepless sword Was heritage. The high Sun’s distant glories gave thee forth On being’s edge: Where the slow skies of the auroral North Lead in the morn And flaming dawns for ever on heaven’s verge Wheel and turn, Thundering remote the clamorous Arctic surge Saw thee born. There ’twas thy lot these later Fates to build, This race of man New-fashion. O watcher with the mountains wild, The icy plain, Thee I too, asleep, have watched, both when the Pole Was brightening wan And when like a wild beast the darkness stole Prowling and slow Alarming with its silent march the soul. O King, I know Thy purpose; for the vacant ages roll Since man below Conversed with God in friendship. Thou, reborn For men perplexed, Seekest in this dim aeon and forlorn With evils vexed The vanished light. For like this Arctic land Death has annexed To sleep, our being’s summits cold and grand Where God abides, Repel the tread of thought. I too, O King,
Page – 221 In winds and tides Have sought Him, and in armies thundering, And where Death strides Over whole nations. Action, thought and peace Were questioned, sleep, And waking, but I had no joy of these, Nor ponderings deep, And pity was not sweet enough, nor good My will could keep. Often I found Him for a moment, stood Astonished, then It fell from me. I could not hold the bliss, The force for men, My brothers. Beauty ceased my heart to please, Brightness in vain Recalled the vision of the light that glows Suns behind: I hated the rich fragrance of the rose; Weary and blind, I tired of the suns and stars; then came With broken mind To heal me of the rash devouring flame, The dull disease, And sojourned with this mountain’s summits bleak, These frozen seas. King, the blind dazzling snows have made me meek, Cooled my unease. Pride could not follow, nor the restless will Come and go; My mind within grew holy, calm and still Like the snow.
MANU O thou who wast with chariots formidable And with the bow! Voiceless and white the cold unchanging hill,
Page – 222 Has it then A mightier presence, deeper mysteries Than human men? The warm low hum of crowds, towns, villages, The sun and rain, The village maidens to the water bound, The happy herds, The fluting of the shepherd lads, the sound Myriad of birds, Speak these not clearer to the heart, convey More subtle words? Here is but great dumb night, an awful day Inert and dead.
RISHI The many’s voices fill the listening ear, Distract the head: The One is silence; on the snows we hear Silence tread.
MANU What hast thou garnered from the crags that lour, The icy field?
RISHI O King, I spurned this body’s death; a Power There was, concealed, That raised me. Rescued from the pleasant bars Our longings build, My winged soul went up above the stars Questing for God.
Page – 223 MANU Oh, didst thou meet Him then? in what bright field Upon thy road?
RISHI I asked the heavenly wanderers as they wheeled For His abode.
MANU Could glorious Saturn and his rings of hue Direct thy flight?
RISHI Sun could not tell, nor any planet knew Its source of light, Nor could I glean that knowledge though I paced The world’s beyond And into outer nothingness have gazed. Time’s narrow sound I crossed, the termless flood where on the Snake One slumbers throned, Attempted. But the ages from Him break Blindly and Space Forgets its origin. Then I returned Where luminous blaze Deathless and ageless in their ease unearned The ethereal race.
MANU Did the gods tell thee? Has Varuna seen The high God’s face?
Page – 224 RISHI How shall they tell of Him who marvel at sin And smile at grief?
MANU Did He not send His blissful Angels down For thy relief?
RISHI The Angels know Him not, who fear His frown, Have fixed belief.
MANU Is there no heaven of eternal light Where He is found?
RISHI The heavens of the Three have beings bright Their portals round, And I have journeyed to those regions blest, Those hills renowned. In Vishnu’s house where wide Love builds his nest, My feet have stood.
MANU Is he not That, the blue-winged Dove of peace, Father of Good?
RISHI Nor Brahma, though the suns and hills and seas Are called his brood.
Page – 225 MANU Is God a dream then? are the heavenly coasts Visions vain?
RISHI I came to Shiva’s roof; the flitting ghosts Compelled me in.
MANU Is He then God whom the forsaken seek, Things of sin?
RISHI He sat on being’s summit grand, a peak Immense of fire.
MANU Knows He the secret of release from tears And from desire?
RISHI His voice is the last murmur silence hears, Tranquil and dire.
MANU The silence calls us then and shall enclose?
RISHI Our true abode Is here and in the pleasant house He chose To harbour God.
Page – 226 MANU In vain thou hast travelled the unwonted stars And the void hast trod!
RISHI King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars That I had fled, To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw How earth was made Out of His being; I perceived the Law, The Truth, the Vast, From which we came and which we are; I heard The ages past Whisper their history, and I knew the Word That forth was cast Into the unformed potency of things To build the suns. Through endless Space and on Time’s iron wings A rhythm runs Our lives pursue, and till the strain’s complete That now so moans And falters, we upon this greenness meet, That measure tread.
MANU Is earth His seat? this body His poor hold Infirmly made?
RISHI I flung off matter like a robe grown old; Matter was dead.
Page – 227 MANU Sages have told of vital force behind: It is God then?
RISHI The vital spirits move but as a wind Within men.
MANU Mind then is lord that like a sovereign sways Delight and pain?
RISHI Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase Form and name.
MANU Is Thought not He who has immortal eyes Time cannot dim?
RISHI Higher, O King, the still voice bade me rise Than thought’s clear dream. Deep in the luminous secrecy, the mute Profound of things, Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute And no voice sings, Light is not, nor our darkness, nor these bright Thunderings, In the deep steady voiceless core of white And burning bliss, The sweet vast centre and the cave divine Called Paradise,
Page – 228 He dwells within us all who dwells not in Aught that is.
MANU Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun Eye cannot face. How shall our souls on that bright awful One Hope even to gaze Who lights the world from His eternity With a few rays?
RISHI Dare on thyself to look, thyself art He, O Aryan, then. There is no thou nor I, beasts of the field, Nor birds, nor men, But flickerings on a many-sided shield Pass, or remain, And this is winged and that with poisonous tongue Hissing coils. We love ourselves and hate ourselves, are wrung With woes and toils To slay ourselves or from ourselves to win Shadowy spoils. And through it all, the rumour and the din, Voices roam, Voices of harps, voices of rolling seas, That rarely come And to our inborn old affinities Call us home. Shadows upon the many-sided Mind Arrive and go, Shadows that shadows see; the vain pomps wind Above, below, While in their hearts the single mighty God Whom none can know,
Page – 229 Guiding the mimic squadrons with His nod Watches it all — Like transient shapes that sweep with half-guessed truth A luminous wall.
MANU Alas! is life then vain? Our gorgeous youth Lithe and tall, Our sweet fair women with their tender eyes Outshining stars, The mighty meditations of the wise, The grandiose wars, The blood, the fiery strife, the clenched dead hands, The circle sparse, The various labour in a hundred lands, Are all these shows To please some audience cold? as in a vase Lily and rose, Mixed snow and crimson, for a moment blaze Till someone throws The withered petals in some outer dust, Heeding not, — The virtuous man made one with the unjust, Is this our lot?
RISHI O King, sight is not vain, nor any sound. Weeds that float Upon a puddle and the majestic round Of the suns Are thoughts eternal, — what man loves to laud And what he shuns; Through glorious things and base the wheel of God For ever runs. O King, no thought is vain; our very dreams Substantial are;
Page – 230 The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams In the star.
MANU Rishi, are we both dreams and real? the near Even as the far?
RISHI Dreams are we not, O King, but see dreams, fear Therefore and strive. Like poets in a wondrous world of thought Always we live, Whose shapes from out ourselves to being brought Abide and thrive. The poet from his vast and labouring mind Brings brilliant out A living world; forth into space they wind, The shining rout, And hate and love, and laugh and weep, enjoy, Fight and shout, King, lord and beggar, tender girl and boy, Foemen, friends; So to His creatures God’s poetic mind A substance lends. The Poet with dazzling inspiration blind, Until it ends, Forgets Himself and lives in what He forms; For ever His soul Through chaos like a wind creating storms, Till the stars roll Through ordered space and the green lands arise, The snowy Pole, Ocean and this great heaven full of eyes, And sweet sounds heard, Man with his wondrous soul of hate and love, And beast and bird, —
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