"ELEVATION" (From Baudelaire) HIGH over glen, tarn, pool or chine, Hills, forest lands, cloud-ways, ocean foam, Beyond the ethers and the sun's tethered home And the last sphere-wall set with starry shine, My spirit skims ; as one who weds the sea And swims in tune with rhythmic waves of sleep, He sends a joyous furrow through the deep,— Vain mesh of words to snare such ecstasy ! Flee far away from fever-sullen places, O self; be rinsed of taint on heights divine, And quaff that pure, that quintessential wine Of clear fire filling the limpid spaces. Past this wearying bulk

IN THE CYCLE OF A DAY THE wide sable expanse of infinite skies From north to south is unfurled by giant hands : And a new moon is cradled in swaddling bands Somewhere beyond ; and the winds hush in surprise. As a flight of grey murmuring birds aswim On a mere of sky, darkness unharshens ; a shimmer and breath Phantom the air : a sun reddening from underneath Bend of the earth minutely forges to the brim. Very lightly the tree-tops in a summer breeze Wave their green plumes to the haze-rimmed sapphire sky : June is ablaze with meandering butterfly And bright lairs that bewilder the engrossed bees. The heron's un

MAHESHA (CHANGELESS ordainer of change, Where mutable lights Into whiteness and rest Are blended on pinnacle heights Of the sky-piercing range In measureless flights Of that stairway unsullied no footfalls of sorrow have pressed. Formless renewer of forms, Who, fetterless, destroying Bondage of Name,— Uplifter from alloying Taints, and shelterer from storms, Whose steps have measured earth's enjoying ; To thy raised foot the earth-delivered came. Aimless, yet knowing each goal,— As un frontiered Space Moves not at all, But centres in each place One instant effortless control ; Or as the pity finds Thy face

ENCIRCLED WITHIN the white encircling sea Brief green inhabitations, stand,— White messenger of things, to be And shuddering pulse of living land. The foam is dank upon the strand, While parrots scream from tree to tree, Green flash of Time-beleaguered band, Pale foregleam of Eternity. October 15, 1936. Page-219

COMMUNICATION EBBING and waning of joy, the day estranged : Here, petalled evening droops ; Below sky-rim the petals have drifted —all is changed To a dim listless stalk where Twilight stoops Horizonward ; and then The black scorpion, Night, lifts claws of loneliness and loops The zenith and all the sky (Its venomed blackness is in the life-blood of men) . . . . .O then, love-armed cry, Bring with compulsive dream the moon's forge low Over the difficult edge Of being, that eastward-straining hopes may know Lit pearl of un tarrying pledge,— Counsel, and laughter, and un dissembling eyes. Time-tame

TELOS WHERE shall I come back to you ? Will the forlorn seaway shoal Under earth-bright zenith blue ? There, un lonely, gain my goal ? Or impassive spirit-clime Sanctuary what earth denied,— All the treasure-seeking time End there as I gain your side ? Either how may flames of peace Beacon wise bewray your heart, So suffuse this un release, So retouch my fading chart. Lonely depths long travelled through, But the seaway starts to shoal,— All my being drawn to you, Fair name and space hood of my goal. May 25, 1935. Page-126

TO BOBBY THE air, that heaps no colour on the sun But speeds the naked messengers of light In that same hue with which they had begun Their God-revealing travel to our sight, Earns not a truer praise for modesty , , Than the cool poise and reticence of soul Guarding your boyhood (as a sapling tree, Though gruff gales bend, yet keeps its essence whole). Now that you pause on the green watershed, The winding dales of childhood at your back And all tomorrows spread beneath your feet, These eyes would probe the misty plains ahead, These lips would pray, " Whatever foes you'll meet, Your swift clean coura

AFTER MIDNIGHT AS we spin towards the Bright, Trundling to the hem of night, Earth with bated hours hides In dark more dreamless and more deep Her winnowing air and crooning tides And aeon-builded hills of sleep. Out of darkness what shall come ? Banished voices of the dumb— Memories of forgotten splendour— Sudden gleam of buried might In the heart where Love the Lender Mocks with Day the outward Night. July 26,1934. Page-79

CORRESPONDENCES (From Baudelaire) NATURE is a shrine where vista'd gloom enhances Whispering tongues that speak from every column— Whereto man fares through serried forests solemn Of symbols that scan him with their intimate glances. As flight of echoes from a far-off beach Into a shadowiness profound unite, Vast as the day's width or as the titaned night, Are matched sounds, colours, perfumes each to each. For perfumes are sensed dawn-pure as childhood's flesh, Softly as oboes, greenly as meadow-shroud, -And others, vitiate, choicely and richly proud, Winged with out flowing through the finite's mes

MAHA-LAKSHMI Borne on the golden-plumed eagle of Vishnu, or seated within the red lotus. UNDER the evening storm-lower Far in the western sky Gold are the wings of the eagle Who bringeth Beauty nigh. Heard we the sedges answer The wind in a whispered cry— Or a silk robe's fading rustle And Her feet passing by ? Framed in the day-dawn glimmer Her fields of lotus lie,— In the heart one worship-petal Wins God-horizonry. July 14, 1933. Page-35