The Sleeper on the Serpent

Eternal rest, the Almighty's deepest power—

Unchanging Self that makes all beings one

And draws together the uttermost extremes

With never the smallest break in motionless peace—

Sleeper on the serpent of infinity,

The ever-still Lord of the universe

Ruling all time from those gigantic coils

That keep a single folded secrecy

In which no past and future stretch away

But the far tail lies gripped in the far mouth,

A circled calm of packed omniscience!

We toil to gain brief riches of repose

Or tiny treasures of uncertain lore:

Tranquillity here is wealth for ever full,

Intense gold hush won by no heave of breath

But winning every truth our toil has missed.

The immense world-energies bear us in their sweep

And toss from life to death, from death to life,

While here that multitudinous tyranny

Is conquered by a silence effortless:

It swims like a smooth fish in a poised bowl—

The imperturbable Sleeper's docile dream,

A shadowy play within white quietudes.

O luminous liberty of unending ease,

We strain our hands to thy transcendent gaze

Rapt inward from the turbulence of time;

But ever we forget thou list aloof

And free because spread under thee as couch

Is the whole turbulence of time controlled,

A concentrated python's Vigilling,

A dense divinity holding each world-force,

Ring within ring of centuries caught and calmed.

Nought save such infinite mastery can support

The Almighty's deepest power, eternal rest.

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