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Part Six
Baroda and Pondicherry Circa 1902 1936
Poems Past and Present
O Word concealed in the upper fire, Thou who hast lingered through centuries, Descend from thy rapt white desire, Plunging through gold eternities.
Into the gulfs of our nature leap, Voice of the spaces, call of the Light! Break the seals of Matter’s sleep, Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind, Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts, Carve thy epic mountain-lined Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds Over the swirl of the heart’s sea. Touch into sight with thy fire-words The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice; In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candle flares, Light, light the suns that never die. For my ear the cry of the seraph stars And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
Let the little troubled life-god within Cast his veils from the still soul, His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin, His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;
Page – 531 All make tranquil, all make free. Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God As He comes from His timeless infinity To build in their rapture His burning abode.
Weave from my life His poem of days, His calm pure dawns and His noons of force. My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race, My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds’ course!
Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close, — Bride of the Fire! I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose, I have slain desire.
Beauty of the Light, surround my life, — Beauty of the Light! I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief, I can bear thy delight.
Image of ecstasy, thrill and enlace, — Image of bliss! I would see only thy marvellous face, Feel only thy kiss.
Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, — Call of the One! Stamp there thy radiance, never to part, O living Sun.
Page – 532
I am the bird of God in His blue; Divinely high and clear I sing the notes of the sweet and the true For the god’s and the seraph’s ear.
I rise like a fire from the mortal’s earth Into a griefless sky And drop in the suffering soil of his birth Fire-seeds of ecstasy.
My pinions soar beyond Time and Space Into unfading Light; I bring the bliss of the Eternal’s face And the boon of the Spirit’s sight.
I measure the worlds with my ruby eyes; I have perched on Wisdom’s tree Thronged with the blossoms of Paradise By the streams of Eternity.
Nothing is hid from my burning heart; My mind is shoreless and still; My song is rapture’s mystic art, My flight immortal will.
Page – 533
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air Between the gold and the blue And wrapped them softly and left them there, My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge Marrying the soil to the sky And sow in this dancing planet midge The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away, Too frail their ethereal stuff; Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay; The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here Must descend himself into clay And the burden of earthly nature bear And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down Here on the sordid earth, Ignorant, labouring, human grown Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long Mid a horror of filth and mire A bed for the golden river’s song, A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night To bring the fire to man; But the hate of hell and human spite Are my meed since the world began.
Page – 534 For man’s mind is the dupe of his animal self; Hoping its lusts to win, He harbours within him a grisly Elf Enamoured of sorrow and sin.
The grey Elf shudders from heaven’s flame And from all things glad and pure; Only by pleasure and passion and pain His drama can endure.
All around is darkness and strife; For the lamps that men call suns Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life Cast by the Undying Ones.
Man lights his little torches of hope That lead to a failing edge; A fragment of Truth is his widest scope, An inn his pilgrimage.
The Truth of truths men fear and deny, The Light of lights they refuse; To ignorant gods they lift their cry Or a demon altar choose.
All that was found must again be sought, Each enemy slain revives, Each battle for ever is fought and refought Through vistas of fruitless lives.
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one And the Titan kings assail, But I dare not rest till my task is done And wrought the eternal will.
Page – 535 How they mock and sneer, both devils and men! “Thy hope is Chimera’s head Painting the sky with its fiery stain; Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.
“Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease And joy and golden room To us who are waifs on inconscient seas And bound to life’s iron doom?
“This earth is ours, a field of Night For our petty flickering fires. How shall it brook the sacred Light Or suffer a god’s desires?
“Come, let us slay him and end his course! Then shall our hearts have release From the burden and call of his glory and force And the curb of his wide white peace.”
But the god is there in my mortal breast Who wrestles with error and fate And tramples a road through mire and waste For the nameless Immaculate.
A voice cried, “Go where none have gone! Dig deeper, deeper yet Till thou reach the grim foundation stone And knock at the keyless gate.”
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep At the very root of things Where the grey Sphinx guards God’s riddle sleep On the Dragon’s outspread wings.
Page – 536 I left the surface gauds of mind And life’s unsatisfied seas And plunged through the body’s alleys blind To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth’s dreadful heart And heard her black mass’ bell. I have seen the source whence her agonies part And the inner reason of hell.
Above me the dragon murmurs moan And the goblin voices flit; I have pierced the Void where Thought was born, I have walked in the bottomless pit.
On a desperate stair my feet have trod Armoured with boundless peace, Bringing the fires of the splendour of God Into the human abyss.
He who I am was with me still; All veils are breaking now. I have heard His voice and borne His will On my vast untroubled brow.
The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged And the golden waters pour Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged And glimmer from shore to shore.
Heaven’s fire is lit in the breast of the earth And the undying suns here burn; Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth The incarnate spirits yearn
Page – 537 Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss: Down a gold-red stairway wend The radiant children of Paradise Clarioning darkness’ end.
A little more and the new life’s doors Shall be carved in silver light With its aureate roof and mosaic floors In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air, For in a raiment of gold and blue There shall move on the earth embodied and fair The living truth of you.
In the silence of the night-time, In the grey and formless eve, When the thought is plagued with loveless Memories that it cannot leave,
When the dawn makes sudden beauty Of a peevish clouded sky, And the rain is sobbing slowly And the wind makes weird reply,
Always comes her face before me And her voice is in my ear, Beautiful and sad and cruel With the azure eyes austere.
Cloudy figure once so luminous With the light and life within When the soul came rippling outwards And the red lips laughed at sin!
Page – 538 Com’st thou with that marble visage From what world instinct with pain Where we pay the price of passion By a law our hearts disdain?
Cast it from thee, O thou goddess! Earning with a smile release From these sad imaginations, Rise into celestial peace.
Travel from the loveless places That our mortal fears create, Where thy natural heavens claim thee And the Gods, thy brothers, wait.
Then descend to me grown radiant, Lighting up terrestrial ground With the feet that brighten heaven When the mighty dance goes round
And the high Gods beating measure Tread the maze that keeps the stars Circling in their luminous orbits Through the eternal thoroughfares.
All below is but confusion Of desires that strive and cry, Some forbidden, some achieving Anguish after ecstasy.
But above our radiant station Is from which by doubt we fell, Reaching only after Heaven And achieving only Hell.
Page – 539 Let the heart be king and master, Let the brain exult and toil; Disbelieve in good and evil, God with Nature reconcile.
Therefore, O rebellious sweetness, Thou tookst arms for joy and love. There achieve them! Take possession Of our radiant seats above.
When in the heart of the valleys and hid by the roses The sweet Love lies, Has he wings to rise to his heavens or in the closes Lives and dies?
On the peaks of the radiant mountains if we should meet him Proud and free, Will he not frown on the valleys? Would it befit him Chained to be?
Will you then speak of the one as a slave and a wanton, The other too bare? But God is the only slave and the only monarch We declare.
It is God who is Love and a boy and a slave for our passion He was made to serve; It is God who is free and proud and the limitless tyrant Our souls deserve.
Page – 540
Mystic daughter of Delight, Life, thou ecstasy, Let the radius of thy flight Be eternity.
On thy wings thou bearest high Glory and disdain, Godhead and mortality, Ecstasy and pain.
Take me in thy bold embrace Without weak reserve, Body dire and unveiled face; Faint not, Life, nor swerve.
All thy bliss I would explore, All thy tyranny. Cruel like the lion’s roar, Sweet like springtide be.
Like a Titan I would take, Like a God enjoy, Like a man contend and make, Revel like a boy.
More I will not ask of thee, Nor my fate would choose; King or conquered let me be, Vanquish, Life, or lose.
Even in rags I am a god; Fallen, I am divine; High I triumph when down-trod, Long I live when slain.
Page – 541
The Little More
One day, and all the half-dead is done, One day, and all the unborn begun; A little path and the great goal, A touch that brings the divine whole.
Hill after hill was climbed and now, Behold, the last tremendous brow And the great rock that none has trod: A step, and all is sky and God.
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