The Great Face O we must plunge to the Great Face behind The myriad vanity of our mortal look. Not in that house of mirrors, the small mind, Dwells the Great Face. Never this glory took Pleasure of glory. The golden eyes are blind To their immortal preciousness: they find Paradise through the deep discovery Of their sweet self-forgetfulnesses by The aching gaze of man which suddenly Recalling them forgets for ever all ache! Here lives a light that knows life's secret source— Omniscience with no single shadow-break— Yet here too is the thoughtless rain that pours In crystal quavers deaf to their rich tone, The hill dawn-

Mystic Marriage Two are the mystic makers of earth's life. Their passion is for ever and their joy Is the breaking forth of the hidden truth of time. But while the ages sing out of their lips The eyes are lost beyond both life and love: Like hierophants feeding a temple fire With silent sweetnesses of sandalwood, They offer the two rapturous bodies and breaths To a single sun of omnipresent mind That knows all by sheer sense of its own gold. This glory keeps the lovers statue-pure; An absolute hush in an eternal poise Contains the keen creative ecstasy— No hunger runs from face to shining face, No lust quivers in the heart

Beyond Both Grief and- Joy Joy is the homing luminous, Grief is the brightness flown from us, Eluding mortal limbs that tire— Both are a single song of fire Whose everlasting harmonies We lose because the strokes of time, Waking for transient things desire, Have split the one creative chime. In God we keep poised fulgencies By travelling with each flame that flies And, through a Self of boundless skies, Conquer the distance that is pain, So winning a more golden gain Than pleasure flickeringly caught Between small hands by feeble thought. In God both pain and pleasure rhyme— A single seizure of sublim

Without and Within Why should I fear the body's burning siege, Deeming its colour a war on eternity? The secrecy within now feels scorched ash, Since still unknown is the salamander soul, The immune indweller of the blaze of time, Outpassioning passion by its cry for God. This soul is native to the crimson throb: It archetypes all animal ecstasy: Body is its own dream half-realised yet. When wakes that reveller of the alchemic deep, Whose golden eyes see heaven everywhere, The peace that plumbs the Immutable's mystery Finds in those leaping tongues of the fire of form No hell blaspheming with a hundred mouths. The

Suns The golden sphere of the sun in earthly skies Echoes a globe of God whose self is light Hung over mortal mind in a blue of bliss. Even as the soil's cry feels in the warm day A wonder-seed within whose circled deep Glows a great life which answers all its need, So the mind's longing sees in that far Eye All knowledge rounded to a rapturous whole. Rishis have risen there and borne bright news Back to the multitudes weeping in the dark And time has thought the immortal hour was won. But when the touch of this high burning orb Lay on the gross and heavy heart of man Each throb wras a white flash, yet in between The flashes gape

From 8th May to 8th July Two months of song have swept my soul Out to the very nerves of sense And with the body's vehemence I have taken to myself the whole Wonder of the timeless Secrecy! Visions of day and dreams of night Have thrilled with a single master-tone Healing the broken world to one Great globe of truth-illumined Eye Behind the flickers of human sight. My ear has caught a harmony Like some huge gloriole of sound Circling infinities around The blindly beating heart of me. With every breath I have inhaled A perfume of eternal peace From all the fluttering transiencies. And my ten finger

-041_Earth^s roof.htm Earth's Roof Earth's roof is heaven's floor— The dome of mind Must bear a trampling terror Before we find Through a sudden gap the mythic Eternity alive! It cannot reach our body Ere hard heels drive Deep into gilded dreams Arching a false Heaven for life's sad longing. Secretly calls The true infinitude— Gong of God's day Or bells of unknown bliss Tintinning far away. But who shall ever answer The bourneless blue Unless the proud dome break Its stony hue Under an unseen dancer's Timeless foot— Rapture whose rhythms are A tearing of thought? Some drunkenness

Grace Lord of the lampless lonelihoods of drowse, Speak your calm thunder that fills the dark with dreams, Stand a black angel athwart a sky all sun, Our shield of mystery against sudden power, A shadow like a benediction falling On every crest of the surge of human sight. Then, shutting my lids, I would see through a thin night-haze All the world's outlines framing prisoner souls: Each jagged boulder a god who groans to no ear. Gulfs of divinity would gape in me, Calling the glittering peaks of thought to plunge Head downward in those quiet wisdom-wells. Deep and more deep the blinded puissances Hurl to the womb of some sweet mo

Forest Cathedrals The forest cathedrals are tolling their loud leaves. A blue wind blows through the green towers of trance, Waking them to a song of secrecies Between the dark earth and the dazzling sun. What name is murmered by those trembling bells That move to no religion of man's heart? We of the fetterless feet are homeless ever. We quest a paradise that looms beyond. Our ache is an Infinite afar and above. Away from the soil we strain, leaving behind The dumb deep whence our clay has sprung towards heaven. Our souls have cut us free from the earth's dream: Rootless our bodies roam, answering their will, And

Full Moon The full moon comes to make all life complete, But ever a shadow on the broad white disk Mars the one perfect and entire dream Earth-nature strives to reach through changing lights— High beauty haunted by a nameless lack! I look within and bear the same bliss-break. The full moon like some mighty mirror hangs And the shadow answers a gap in my own heart: Splendour of song and lustre of love—yet loss Of the one all-consummating harmony! O soul of man, O spirit of the universe, That sable touch on time's intensest hour Is the mystery of the God forgotten in you! 11-7-48 Page-106