II SONNETS 1930-1950 The kingdom Within There is a kingdom of the spirit’s ease. It is not in this helpless swirl of thought, Foam from the world-sea or spray-whisper caught, With which we build mind’s shifting symmetries, Nor in life’s stuff of passionate unease, Nor the heart’s unsure emotions frailty wrought Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon led1 to nought Nor in this body’s solid transiences. Wider behind than the vast universe Our spirit scans the drama and the stir, A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse That veils it from its ignorant

The Mother of God A conscious and eternal Power is here Behind unhappiness and mortal birth And the error of Thought and blundering trudge of Time. The Mother of God, his sister and his spouse, Daughter of his wisdom, of his might1 the mate, She has leapt from the Transcendent’s secret breast To build her rainbow worlds of mind and life. Between the superconscient absolute Light And the lnconscient’s vast unthinking toil In the rolling and routine of Matter’s sleep And the somnambulist motion of the stars She forces on the cold unwilling Void Her adventure of life, the passionate dreams of her lust. Amid the wo

SHORT POEMS Fragments Morcundeya O will of God that stiffest and the Void Is peopled, men have called thee force, upbuoyed Upon whose wings the stars borne round and round Need not one hour of rest; light, form and sound Are marks of thy eternal movement. We See what thou choosest, but ’tis thou we see. I Morcundeya whom the worlds release, The Seer, - but it is God alone that sees! – Soar up above the bonds that hold below Man to his littleness, lost in the show Perennial which the senses round him build; I find them out and am no more beguiled. But ere I rise, ere I become the vast And luminous Infinite

The Tale of Nala Nala Nishadha's king, paced by a stream Which ran escaping from solitudes To flow through gardens in a pleasant land. Murmuring it came of the green souls of hills And of the lawns and hamlets it had seen, The brown-limbed peasants toiling in the sun, And the tired bullocks in the thirsty fields. In its bright talk and laughter it recalled The moonlight and the lapping dangerous tongues, The sunlight and the skimming wings of birds, And gurgling jars, and bright bathed limbs of girls At morning, and its noons and lonely eves. This memory to the jasmine trees it sang Which dropped their slow white-petalled kisses down Upon

Epiphany Majestic, mild, immortally august, In silence throned, to just and to unjust One Lord of deep unutterable love, I saw Him, Shiva, like a brooding dove Close-winged upon her nest. The outcaste came, The sinners gathered round that tender Flame, The demons, by the other sterner gods Rejected from their luminous abodes, Gathered around the Refuge of the lost, Soft-smiling on that wild and grisly host. All who were refugeless, wretched, unloved, The wicked and the good together moved Naturally to Him, the asylum sweet, And found their heaven at their Master’s feet. The vision changed and in His place there stood

Madhusudan Dutt Poet, who first with skill inspired did teach Greatness to our divine Bengali speech ,— Divine, but rather with delightful moan Spring’s golden mother makes when twin-alone She lies with golden Love and heaven's birds Call hymeneal with enchanting words Over their passionate faces, rather these Than with the calm and grandiose melodies (Such calm as consciousness of godhead owns) The high gods speak upon their ivory thrones Sitting in council high, — till taught by thee Fragrance and noise of the world-shaking sea. Thus do they praise thee who amazed espy Thy winged epic and hear the arrows cry And jour

TheThreeCriesofDeiphobus Awake, awake, O sleeping men of Troy, That sleep and know not in the grasp of Hell I perish in the treacherous lonely night To foes betrayed, environed and undone. O Trojans, will ye sleep until the doom Have slipped its leash and bark upon your doors? Not long will ye, unless in Pluto’s realm, Have slumber, since forsaken among foes I drink the bitter cup of lonely death Unheeded and from helping faces far. O Trojans, Trojans, yet again I call! Swift help we need, or Ilion’s days are done. Epitaph Moulded of twilight and the vesper star Midnight in her with noon made quiet

To R. ON HER BIRTHDAY The repetition of thy gracious years Brings back once more thy natal morn. Upon the crest of youth thy life appears, – A wave upborne. Amid the hundreds thronging Ocean’s floor A wave upon the crowded sea With regular rhythm pushing towards the shore Our life must be. The power that moves it is the Ocean’s force Invincible, eternal, free, And by that impulse it pursues its course Inevitably. We, too, by the Eternal Might are led To whatsoever goal He wills. Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspread His strong breath fills. Exulting in the grace and stre

-28_The Vedantin's Prayer.htm The Vedantin’s Prayer Spirit Supreme Who musest in the silence of the heart, Eternal gleam, Thou only Art! Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled, My sunlit part By clouds assailed? Why am I thus disfigured by desire, Distracted, haled, Scorched by the fire Of fitful passions, from thy peace out-thrust Into the gyre Of every gust? Betrayed to grief, o’ertaken with dismay, Surprised by lust? Let not my grey Blood-clotted past repel thy sovereign ruth, Nor even delay, O lonely Truth! Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still Deceive my youth.

The Descent of Ahana* AHANA Strayed from the roads of Time, far-couched on the void I have slumbered; Centuries passed me unnoticed, millenniums perished unnumbered. I, Ahana, slept. In the stream of thy sevenfold Ocean, Being, how hast thou laboured without me? Whence was thy motion? Not without me can thy existence be. But I came fleeing;- Vexed was my soul with joys of sound and weary of seeing; Into the deeps of my nature I lapsed, I escaped into slumber. Out of the silence who call me back to the clamour and cumber? Why should I go with you? What hast thou done in return for my labour, World? What wage had my soul when its strength was thy nei