CANTO SEVEN*   ***     IN the little hermitage in the forest's heart, In the sunlight and the moonlight and the dark The daily human life went plodding on Even as before with its small unchanging works And its spare outward body of routine And happy quiet of ascetic peace. The old beauty smiled of the terrestrial scene; She too was her old gracious self to men. The Ancient Mother clutched her child to her breast Pressing her close in her environing arms, As if earth ever the same could for ever keep The living spirit and body in her clasp, As if death were not there nor end nor change.

  CANTO TWO   THE GOSPEL OF DEATH AND VANITY OF THE IDEAL   THEN pealed the calm inexorable voice: Abolishing hope, cancelling life's golden truths, Fatal its accents smote the trembling air. That lovely world swam thin and frail, most like Some pearly evanescent farewell gleam On the faint verge of dusk in moonless eves. "Prisoner of Nature, many-visioned spirit, Thought's creature in the ideal's realm enjoying Thy unsubstantial immortality The subtle marvellous mind of man has feigned, This is the world from which thy yearnings came. When it would build ete

  BOOK SIX The Book of Fate CANTO ONE   THE WORD OF FATE   IN silent bounds bordering the mortal's plane Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise Came chanting through the large and lustrous air. Attracted by the golden summer-earth That lay beneath him like a glowing bowl Tilted upon a table of the Gods, Turning as if moved round by an unseen hand To catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun, He passed from the immortal's happy paths To a world of toil and quest and grief and hope, To these rooms of a see-saw game of death and life. Across an i

  BOOK THREE The Book of the Divine Mother CANTO ONE   THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE   ALL is too little that the world can give: Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time And cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst. Although of One these forms of greatness are And by its breath of grace our lives abide, Although more near to us than nearness' self, It is some utter truth of what we are; Hidden by its own works it seemed far off, Impenetrable, occult, voiceless, obscure. The Presence was lost by which all things have charm, The Glory lacked of which they are dim sig

  CANTO THREE   THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW CREATION   A MIGHTIER task remained than all he had done. To that he turned from which all being comes, A sign attending from the Secrecy Which knows the Truth ungrasped behind our thoughts And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze. In the unapproachable stillness of his soul, Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone Patient he sat like an incarnate hope Motionless on a pedestal of prayer. A Strength he sought that was not yet on earth, Help from a Power too great for mortal will, The Light of a Truth now only

  CANTO THREE   SATYAVAN AND SAVITRI   OUT of the voiceless mystery of the past In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds These spirits met upon the roads of Time. Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves At once aware grew of each other warned By the first call of a delightful voice And a first vision of the destined face. As when being cries to being from its depths Behind the screen of the external sense And strives to find the heart-disclosing word, The passionate speech revealing the soul's need, But the mind's ignorance veils the inner sight, Only a little breaks through our earth-m

  CANTO ELEVEN   THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER MIND   THERE ceased the limits of the labouring Power. But being and creation cease not there. For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind, It is greater than its earthly instrument: The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space Escapes on every side into some vast That is a passage to infinity. It moves eternal in the spirit's field, A runner towards the far spiritual light, A child and servant of the spirit's force. But mind too falls back from a nameless

  CANTO THREE   THE YOGA OF THE KING: THE YOGA OF THE SOUL'S RELEASE   A WORLD'S desire compelled her mortal birth. One in the front of the immemorial quest, Protagonist of the mysterious play In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms And limits his eternity by the hours And the blind Void struggles to live and see, A thinker and toiler in the ideal's air, Brought down to earth's dumb need her radiant power. His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres Into our province of ephemeral sight, A colonist from immortality. A pointing beam on earth's uncertain roads,

  CANTO TWO   THE WAY OF FATE AND THE PROBLEM OF PAIN   A SILENCE sealed the irrevocable decree, The word of Fate that fell from the heavenly lips Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse Unless heaven's will itself could change its course. Or so it seemed; yet from the silence rose One voice that questioned changeless destiny. A will that strove against the immutable Will, A mother's heart had heard the fateful speech That rang like a sanction to the call of death And came like a chill close to life and hope. Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire. She felt

  CANTO FOUR    THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE   ON a height he stood that looked towards greater heights. Our early approaches to the Infinite Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun, What now we see is a shadow of what must come. The earth's uplook to a remote unknown Is a preface only of the epic climb Of human soul from its flat earthly state To the discovery of a greater self And the far gleam of an eternal Light. This world is a beginning and a base Where Life and Mind erect their