-22_ book-3 canto-2 the adoration of the divine mother.htm CANTO TWO   THE ADORATION OF THE DIVINE MOTHER     A STILLNESS absolute, incommunicable, Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul; A wall of stillness shuts it from the world, A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense And makes unreal all that mind has known, All that the labouring senses still would weave Prolonging an imaged unreality. Self's vast spiritual silence occupies space; Only the Inconceivable is left, Only the Nameless without space and time: Abolished is the burdening need of life: Thought falls from us, we cease

-16_ book-2 canto-11 the kingdoms and godheads of the greater mind.htm 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 pea

CANTO FIVE   THE GODHEADS OF THE LITTLE LIFE     A FIXED and narrow power with rigid forms, He saw the empire of the little life, An unhappy corner in eternity. It lived upon the margin of the Idea Protected by Ignorance as in a shell. Then, hoping to learn the secret of this world He peered across its scanty fringe of sight, To disengage from its surface-clear obscurity the Force that moved it and the Idea that made Imposing smallness

-18_ book-2 canto-13 in the self of mind.htm CANTO THIRTEEN   IN THE SELF OF MIND     AT last there came a bare indifferent sky Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice, But answered nothing to a million calls, The soul's endless question met with no response. An abrupt conclusion ended eager hopes, A deep cessation in a mighty calm, A finis-line on the last page of thought And a margin and a blank of wordless peace. There paused the climbing hierarchy of worlds. He stood on a wide arc of summit Space Alone with an enormous Self of Mind Which held all life in a comer of its vasts.

-14_ book-2 canto-9 the paradise of the life gods.htm CANTO NINE   THE PARADISE OF THE LIFE-GODS     AROUND him shone a great felicitous Day. A lustre of some rapturous Infinite, It held in the splendour of its golden laugh Regions of the heart's happiness set free, Intoxicated with the wine of God, Immersed in light, perpetually divine. A favourite and intimate of the Gods Obeying the, divine command to joy, It was the sovereign of its own delight And master of the kingdoms of its force. Assured of the bliss for which all forms were made, Unmoved by fear and grief and the shocks of Fa

-24_ book-3 canto-4 the vision and the boon.htm CANTO FOUR   THE VISION AND THE BOON      THEN suddenly there rose a sacred stir. Amid the lifeless silence of the Void In a solitude and an immensity A sound came quivering like a loved footfall Heard in the listening spaces of the soul; A touch perturbed his fibres with delight. An influence had approached the mortal range, A boundless Heart was near his longing heart, A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape. All at her contact broke from silence' seal; Spirit and body thrilled identified, Linked in the grasp of an unspoke

CANTO TWO   THE ISSUE     A WHILE, withdrawn in secret fields of thought, Her mind moved in a many-imaged past That lived again and saw its end approach: Dying, it lived imperishably in her, Transient and vanishing from transient eyes, Invisible, a fateful ghost of self, It bore the future on its phantom breast, Along the fleeting event's far-backward trail Regressed the stream of the insistent hours, And on the bank of the m

-17_ book-2 canto-12 the heavens of the ideal.htm CANTO TWELVE   THE HEAVENS OF THE IDEAL     ALWAYS the Ideal beckoned from afar. Awakened by the touch of the Unseen, Deserting the boundary of things achieved, Aspired the strong discoverer, tireless Thought, Revealing at each step a luminous world. It left known summits for the unknown peaks; Impassioned, it sought the lone unrealised Truth, It longed for the Light that knows not death and birth. Each stage of the soul's remote ascent was built Into a constant heaven felt always here. At each pace of the journey marvellous A new degree

CANTO THREE THE GLORY AND FALL OF LIFE     AN uneven broad ascent now lured his feet. Answering a greater Nature's troubled call He crossed the limits of embodied Mind And entered wide obscure disputed fields Where all was doubt and change and nothing sure, A world of search and toil without repose. As one who meets the face of the Unknown, A questioner with none to give reply, Attracted to a problem never solved, Always uncertain of the gro