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Das Kollektive Savitri-Projekt: Das Buch vom Weltenwanderer

Savitri Buch 2 Canto 10 (ID ist identisch mit Buchzeile rechts!)

ID English Deutsch Zeile
1 This too must now be overpassed and left, 1
2 As all must be until the Highest is gained 2
3 In whom the world and self grow true and one: 3
4 Till That is reached our journeying cannot cease. 4
5 Always a nameless goal beckons beyond, 5
6 Always ascends the zigzag of the gods 6
7 And upward points the spirit's climbing Fire. 7
8 This breath of hundred-hued felicity 8
9 And its pure heightened figure of Time's joy, 9
10 Tossed upon waves of flawless happiness, 10
11 Hammered into single beats of ecstasy, 11
12 This fraction of the spirit's integer 12
13 Caught into a passionate greatness of extremes, 13
14 This limited being lifted to zenith bliss, 14
15 Happy to enjoy one touch of things supreme, 15
16 Packed into its sealed small infinity, 16
17 Its endless time-made world outfacing Time, 17
18 A little output of God's vast delight. 18
19 The moments stretched towards the eternal Now, 19
20 The hours discovered immortality, 20
21 But, satisfied with their sublime contents, 21
22 On peaks they ceased whose tops half-way to Heaven 22
23 Pointed to an apex they could never mount, 23
24 To a grandeur in whose air they could not live. 24
25 Inviting to their high and exquisite sphere, 25
26 To their secure and fine extremities 26
27 This creature who hugs his limits to feel safe, 27
28 These heights declined a greater adventure's call. 28
29 A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire 29
30 Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss. 30
31 It could not house the wideness of a soul 31
32 Which needed all infinity for its home. 32
33 A memory soft as grass and faint as sleep, 33
34 The beauty and call receding sank behind 34
35 Like a sweet song heard fading far away 35
36 Upon the long high road to Timelessness. 36
37 Above was an ardent white tranquillity. 37
38 A musing spirit looked out on the worlds 38
39 And like a brilliant clambering of skies 39
40 Passing through clarity to an unseen Light 40
41 Large lucent realms of Mind from stillness shone. 41
42 But first he met a silver-grey expanse 42
43 Where Day and Night had wedded and were one: 43
44 It was a tract of dim and shifting rays 44
45 Parting Life's sentient flow from Thought's self-poise. 45
46 A coalition of uncertainties 46
47 There exercised uneasy government 47
48 On a ground reserved for doubt and reasoned guess, 48
49 A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance. 49
50 At its low extremity held difficult sway 50
51 A mind that hardly saw and slowly found; 51
52 Its nature to our earthly nature close 52
53 And kin to our precarious mortal thought 53
54 That looks from soil to sky and sky to soil 54
55 But knows not the below nor the beyond, 55
56 It only sensed itself and outward things. 56
57 This was the first means of our slow ascent 57
58 From the half-conscience of the animal soul 58
59 Living in a crowded press of shape-events 59
60 In a realm it cannot understand nor change; 60
61 Only it sees and acts in a given scene 61
62 And feels and joys and sorrows for a while. 62
63 The ideas that drive the obscure embodied spirit 63
64 Along the roads of suffering and desire 64
65 In a world that struggles to discover Truth, 65
66 Found here their power to be and Nature-force. 66
67 Here are devised the forms of an ignorant life 67
68 That sees the empiric fact as settled law, 68
69 Labours for the hour and not for eternity 69
70 And trades its gains to meet the moment's call: 70
71 The slow process of a material mind 71
72 Which serves the body it should rule and use 72
73 And needs to lean upon an erring sense, 73
74 Was born in that luminous obscurity. 74
75 Advancing tardily from a limping start, 75
76 Crutching hypothesis on argument, 76
77 Throning its theories as certitudes, 77
78 It reasons from the half-known to the unknown, 78
79 Ever constructing its frail house of thought, 79
80 Ever undoing the web that it has spun. 80
81 A twilight sage whose shadow seems to him self, 81
82 Moving from minute to brief minute lives; 82
83 A king dependent on his satellites 83
84 Signs the decrees of ignorant ministers, 84
85 A judge in half-possession of his proofs, 85
86 A voice clamant of uncertainty's postulates, 86
87 An architect of knowledge, not its source. 87
88 This powerful bondslave of his instruments 88
89 Thinks his low station Nature's highest top, 89
90 Oblivious of his share in all things made 90
91 And haughtily humble in his own conceit 91
92 Believes himself a spawn of Matter's mud 92
93 And takes his own creations for his cause. 93
94 To eternal light and knowledge meant to rise, 94
95 Up from man's bare beginning is our climb; 95
96 Out of earth's heavy smallness we must break, 96
97 We must search our nature with spiritual fire: 97
98 An insect crawl preludes our glorious flight; 98
99 Our human state cradles the future god, 99
100 Our mortal frailty an immortal force. 100
101 At the glow-worm top of these pale glimmer-realms 101
102 Where dawn-sheen gambolled with the native dusk 102
103 And helped the Day to grow and Night to fail, 103
104 Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge, 104
105 He came into a realm of early Light 105
106 And the regency of a half-risen sun. 106
107 Out of its rays our mind's full orb was born. 107
108 Appointed by the Spirit of the Worlds 108
109 To mediate with the unknowing depths, 109
110 A prototypal deft Intelligence 110
111 Half-poised on equal wings of thought and doubt 111
112 Toiled ceaselessly twixt being's hidden ends. 112
113 A Secrecy breathed in life's moving act; 113
114 A covert nurse of Nature's miracles, 114
115 It shaped life's wonders out of Matter's mud: 115
116 It cut the pattern of the shapes of things, 116
117 It pitched mind's tent in the vague ignorant Vast. 117
118 A master Magician of measure and device 118
119 Has made an eternity from recurring forms 119
120 And to the wandering spectator thought 120
121 Assigned a seat on the inconscient stage. 121
122 On earth by the will of this Arch-Intelligence 122
123 A bodiless energy put on Matter's robe; 123
124 Proton and photon served the imager Eye 124
125 To change things subtle into a physical world 125
126 And the invisible appeared as shape 126
127 And the impalpable was felt as mass: 127
128 Magic of percept joined with concept's art 128
129 And lent to each object an interpreting name: 129
130 Idea was disguised in a body's artistry, 130
131 And by a strange atomic law's mystique 131
132 A frame was made in which the sense could put 132
133 Its symbol picture of the universe. 133
134 Even a greater miracle was done. 134
135 The mediating light linked body's power, 135
136 The sleep and dreaming of the tree and plant, 136
137 The animal's vibrant sense, the thought in man, 137
138 To the effulgence of a Ray above. 138
139 Its skill endorsing Matter's right to think 139
140 Cut sentient passages for the mind of flesh 140
141 And found a means for Nescience to know. 141
142 Offering its little squares and cubes of word 142
143 As figured substitutes for reality, 143
144 A mummified mnemonic alphabet, 144
145 It helped the unseeing Force to read her works. 145
146 A buried consciousness arose in her 146
147 And now she dreams herself human and awake. 147
148 But all was still a mobile Ignorance; 148
149 Still Knowledge could not come and firmly grasp 149
150 This huge invention seen as a universe. 150
151 A specialist of logic's hard machine 151
152 Imposed its rigid artifice on the soul; 152
153 An aide of the inventor intellect, 153
154 It cut Truth into manageable bits 154
155 That each might have his ration of thought-food, 155
156 Then new-built Truth's slain body by its art: 156
157 A robot exact and serviceable and false 157
158 Displaced the spirit's finer view of things: 158
159 A polished engine did the work of a god. 159
160 None the true body found, its soul seemed dead: 160
161 None had the inner look which sees Truth's whole; 161
162 All glorified the glittering substitute. 162
163 Then from the secret heights a wave swept down, 163
164 A brilliant chaos of rebel light arose; 164
165 It looked above and saw the dazzling peaks, 165
166 It looked within and woke the sleeping god. 166
167 Imagination called her shining squads 167
168 That venture into undiscovered scenes 168
169 Where all the marvels lurk none yet has known: 169
170 Lifting her beautiful and miraculous head, 170
171 She conspired with inspiration's sister brood 171
172 To fill thought's skies with glimmering nebulae. 172
173 A bright Error fringed the mystery-altar's frieze; 173
174 Darkness grew nurse to wisdom's occult sun, 174
175 Myth suckled knowledge with her lustrous milk; 175
176 The infant passed from dim to radiant breasts. 176
177 Thus worked the Power upon the growing world; 177
178 Its subtle craft withheld the full-orbed blaze, 178
179 Cherished the soul's childhood and on fictions fed 179
180 Far richer in their sweet and nectarous sap 180
181 Nourishing its immature divinity 181
182 Than the staple or dry straw of Reason's tilth, 182
183 Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts, 183
184 Plebeian fare on which today we thrive. 184
185 Thus streamed down from the realm of early Light 185
186 Ethereal thinkings into Matter's world; 186
187 Its gold-horned herds trooped into earth's cave-heart. 187
188 Its morning rays illume our twilight's eyes, 188
189 Its young formations move the mind of earth 189
190 To labour and to dream and new-create, 190
191 To feel beauty's touch and know the world and self: 191
192 The Golden Child began to think and see. 192
193 In those bright realms are Mind's first forward steps. 193
194 Ignorant of all but eager to know all, 194
195 Its curious slow enquiry there begins; 195
196 Ever its searching grasps at shapes around, 196
197 Ever it hopes to find out greater things. 197
198 Ardent and golden-gleamed with sunrise fires, 198
199 Alert it lives upon invention's verge. 199
200 Yet all it does is on an infant's scale, 200
201 As if the cosmos were a nursery game, 201
202 Mind, life the playthings of a Titan's babe. 202
203 As one it works who builds a mimic fort 203
204 Miraculously stable for a while, 204
205 Made of the sands upon a bank of Time 205
206 Mid an occult eternity's shoreless sea. 206
207 A small keen instrument the great Puissance chose, 207
208 An arduous pastime passionately pursues; 208
209 To teach the Ignorance is her difficult charge, 209
210 Her thought starts from an original nescient Void 210
211 And what she teaches she herself must learn 211
212 Arousing knowledge from its sleepy lair. 212
213 For knowledge comes not to us as a guest 213
214 Called into our chamber from the outer world; 214
215 A friend and inmate of our secret self, 215
216 It hid behind our minds and fell asleep 216
217 And slowly wakes beneath the blows of life; 217
218 The mighty daemon lies unshaped within, 218
219 To evoke, to give it form is Nature's task. 219
220 All was a chaos of the true and false, 220
221 Mind sought amid deep mists of Nescience; 221
222 It looked within itself but saw not God. 222
223 A material interim diplomacy 223
224 Denied the Truth that transient truths might live 224
225 And hid the Deity in creed and guess 225
226 That the World-Ignorance might grow slowly wise. 226
227 This was the imbroglio made by sovereign Mind 227
228 Looking from a gleam-ridge into the Night 228
229 In her first tamperings with Inconscience: 229
230 Its alien dusk baffles her luminous eyes; 230
231 Her rapid hands must learn a cautious zeal; 231
232 Only a slow advance the earth can bear. 232
233 Yet was her strength unlike the unseeing earth's 233
234 Compelled to handle makeshift instruments 234
235 Invented by the life-force and the flesh. 235
236 Earth all perceives through doubtful images, 236
237 All she conceives in hazardous jets of sight, 237
238 Small lights kindled by touches of groping thought. 238
239 Incapable of the soul's direct inlook 239
240 She sees by spasms and solders knowledge-scrap, 240
241 Makes Truth the slave-girl of her indigence, 241
242 Expelling Nature's mystic unity 242
243 Cuts into quantum and mass the moving All; 243
244 In her own domain a pontiff and a seer, 244
245 That greater Power with her half-risen sun 245
246 Wrought within limits but possessed her field; 246
247 She knew by a privilege of thinking force 247
248 And claimed an infant sovereignty of sight. 248
249 In her eyes however darkly fringed was lit 249
250 The Archangel's gaze who knows inspired his acts 250
251 And shapes a world in its far-seeing flame. 251
252 In her own realm she stumbles not nor fails, 252
253 But moves in boundaries of subtle power 253
254 Across which mind can step towards the sun. 254
255 A candidate for a higher suzerainty, 255
256 A passage she cut through from Night to Light, 256
257 And searched for an ungrasped Omniscience. 257
258 A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf. 258
259 First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb, 259
260 A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl, 260
261 A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds 261
262 For ever stooped to hammer fact and form. 262
263 Absorbed and cabined in external sight, 263
264 It takes its stand on Nature's solid base. 264
265 A technician admirable, a thinker crude, 265
266 A riveter of Life to habit's grooves, 266
267 Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny, 267
268 A prisoner of the moulds in which it works, 268
269 It binds itself by what itself creates. 269
270 A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules, 270
271 It sees as Law the habits of the world, 271
272 It sees as Truth the habits of the mind. 272
273 In its realm of concrete images and events 273
274 Turning in a worn circle of ideas 274
275 And ever repeating old familiar acts, 275
276 It lives content with the common and the known. 276
277 It loves the old ground that was its dwelling-place: 277
278 Abhorring change as an audacious sin, 278
279 Distrustful of each new discovery 279
280 Only it advances step by careful step 280
281 And fears as if a deadly abyss the unknown. 281
282 A prudent treasurer of its ignorance, 282
283 It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope, 283
284 Preferring a safe foothold upon things 284
285 To the dangerous joy of wideness and of height. 285
286 The world's slow impressions on its labouring mind, 286
287 Tardy imprints almost indelible, 287
288 Increase their value by their poverty; 288
289 The old sure memories are its capital stock: 289
290 Only what sense can grasp seems absolute: 290
291 External fact it figures as sole truth, 291
292 Wisdom identifies with the earthward look, 292
293 And things long known and actions always done 293
294 Are to its clinging hold a balustrade 294
295 Of safety on the perilous stair of Time. 295
296 Heaven's trust to it are the established ancient ways, 296
297 Immutable laws man has no right to change, 297
298 A sacred legacy from the great dead past 298
299 Or the one road that God has made for life, 299
300 A firm shape of Nature never to be changed, 300
301 Part of the huge routine of the universe. 301
302 A smile from the Preserver of the Worlds 302
303 Sent down of old this guardian Mind to earth 303
304 That all might stand in their fixed changeless type 304
305 And from their secular posture never move. 305
306 One sees it circling faithful to its task, 306
307 Tireless in an assigned tradition's round; 397
308 In decayed and crumbling offices of Time 308
309 It keeps close guard in front of custom's wall, 309
310 Or in an ancient Night's dim environs 310
311 It dozes on a little courtyard's stones 311
312 And barks at every unfamiliar light 312
313 As at a foe who would break up its home, 313
314 A watch-dog of the spirit's sense-railed house 314
315 Against intruders from the Invisible, 315
316 Nourished on scraps of life and Matter's bones 316
317 In its kennel of objective certitude. 317
318 And yet behind it stands a cosmic might: 318
319 A measured Greatness keeps its vaster plan, 319
320 A fathomless sameness rhythms the tread of life; 320
321 The stars' changeless orbits furrow inert Space, 321
322 A million species follow one mute Law. 322
323 A huge inertness is the world's defence, 323
324 Even in change is treasured changelessness; 324
325 Into inertia revolution sinks, 325
326 In a new dress the old resumes its role; 326
327 The Energy acts, the stable is its seal: 327
328 On Shiva's breast is stayed the enormous dance. 328
329 A fiery spirit came, next of the three. 329
330 A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass, 330
331 A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned 331
332 From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds 332
333 And with its dire edge eats at being's heart. 333
334 Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire. 334
335 A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names: 335
336 A need of multitude and uncertainty 336
337 Pricks it for ever to pursue the One 337
338 On countless roads across the vasts of Time 338
339 Through circuits of unending difference. 339
340 It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire. 340
341 A radiance gleaming on a murky stream, 341
342 It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell; 342
343 It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire 343
344 And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force; 344
345 A huge chameleon gold and blue and red 345
346 Turning to black and grey and lurid brown, 346
347 Hungry it stared from a mottled bough of life 347
348 To snap up insect joys, its favourite food, 348
349 The dingy sustenance of a sumptuous frame 349
350 Nursing the splendid passion of its hues. 350
351 A snake of flame with a dull cloud for tail, 351
352 Followed by a dream-brood of glittering thoughts, 352
353 A lifted head with many-tinged flickering crests, 353
354 It licked at knowledge with a smoky tongue. 354
355 A whirlpool sucking in an empty air, 355
356 It based on vacancy stupendous claims, 356
357 In Nothingness born to Nothingness returned, 357
358 Yet all the time unwittingly it drove 358
359 Towards the hidden Something that is All. 359
360 Ardent to find, incapable to retain, 360
361 A brilliant instability was its mark, 361
362 To err its inborn trend, its native cue. 362
363 At once to an unreflecting credence prone, 363
364 It thought all true that flattered its own hopes; 364
365 It cherished golden nothings born of wish, 365
366 It snatched at the unreal for provender. 366
367 In darkness it discovered luminous shapes; 367
368 Peering into a shadow-hung half-light 368
369 It saw hued images scrawled on Fancy's cave; 369
370 Or it swept in circles through conjecture's night 370
371 And caught in imagination's camera 371
372 Bright scenes of promise held by transient flares, 372
373 Fixed in life's air the feet of hurrying dreams, 373
374 Kept prints of passing Forms and hooded Powers 374
375 And flash-images of half-seen verities. 375
376 An eager spring to seize and to possess 376
377 Unguided by reason or the seeing soul 377
378 Was its first natural motion and its last, 378
379 It squandered life's force to achieve the impossible: 379
380 It scorned the straight road and ran on wandering curves 380
381 And left what it had won for untried things; 381
382 It saw unrealised aims as instant fate 382
383 And chose the precipice for its leap to heaven. 383
384 Adventure its system in the gamble of life, 384
385 It took fortuitous gains as safe results; 385
386 Error discouraged not its confident view 386
387 Ignorant of the deep law of being's ways 387
388 And failure could not slow its fiery clutch; 388
389 One chance made true warranted all the rest. 389
390 Attempt, not victory, was the charm of life. 390
391 An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes, 391
392 Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire, 392
393 It ran its race and came in first or last. 393
394 Yet were its works nor small and vain nor null; 394
395 It nursed a portion of infinity's strength 395
396 And could create the high things its fancy willed; 396
397 Its passion caught what calm intelligence missed. 397
398 Insight of impulse laid its leaping grasp 398
399 On heavens high Thought had hidden in dazzling mist, 399
400 Caught glimmers that revealed a lurking sun: 400
401 It probed the void and found a treasure there. 401
402 A half-intuition purpled in its sense; 402
403 It threw the lightning's fork and hit the unseen. 403
404 It saw in the dark and vaguely blinked in the light, 404
405 Ignorance was its field, the unknown its prize. 405
406 Of all these Powers the greatest was the last. 406
407 Arriving late from a far plane of thought 407
408 Into a packed irrational world of Chance 408
409 Where all was grossly felt and blindly done, 409
410 Yet the haphazard seemed the inevitable, 410
411 Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan, 411
412 To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time. 412
413 Adept of clear contrivance and design, 413
414 A pensive face and close and peering eyes, 414
415 She took her firm and irremovable seat, 415
416 The strongest, wisest of the troll-like Three. 416
417 Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe, 417
418 She looked upon an object universe 418
419 And the multitudes that in it live and die 419
420 And the body of Space and the fleeing soul of Time, 420
421 And took the earth and stars into her hands 421
422 To try what she could make of these strange things. 422
423 In her strong purposeful laborious mind, 423
424 Inventing her scheme-lines of reality 424
425 And the geometric curves of her time-plan, 425
426 She multiplied her slow half-cuts at Truth: 426
427 Impatient of enigma and the unknown, 427
428 Intolerant of the lawless and the unique, 428
429 Imposing reflection on the march of Force, 429
430 Imposing clarity on the unfathomable, 430
431 She strove to reduce to rules the mystic world. 431
432 Nothing she knew but all things hoped to know. 432
433 In dark inconscient realms once void of thought, 433
434 Missioned by a supreme Intelligence 434
435 To throw its ray upon the obscure Vast, 435
436 An imperfect light leading an erring mass 436
437 By the power of sense and the idea and word, 437
438 She ferrets out Nature's process, substance, cause. 438
439 All life to harmonise by thought's control, 439
440 She with the huge imbroglio struggles still; 440
441 Ignorant of all but her own seeking mind 441
442 To save the world from Ignorance she came. 442
443 A sovereign worker through the centuries 443
444 Observing and remoulding all that is, 444
445 Confident she took up her stupendous charge. 445
446 There the low bent and mighty figure sits 446
447 Bowed under the arc-lamps of her factory home 447
448 Amid the clatter and ringing of her tools. 448
449 A rigorous stare in her creative eyes 449
450 Coercing the plastic stuff of cosmic Mind, 450
451 She sets the hard inventions of her brain 451
452 In a pattern of eternal fixity: 452
453 Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand, 453
454 Unconscious of too close realities, 454
455 Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart, 455
456 She leans to forge her credos and iron codes 456
457 And metal structures to imprison life 457
458 And mechanic models of all things that are. 458
459 For the world seen she weaves a world conceived: 459
460 She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines 460
461 Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought, 461
462 Her segment systems of the Infinite, 462
463 Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts 463
464 And myths by which she explains the inexplicable. 464
465 At will she spaces in thin air of mind 465
466 Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung, 466
467 Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme, 467
468 Her numberless warring strict philosophies; 468
469 Out of Nature's body of phenomenon 469
470 She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines, 470
471 Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run, 471
472 Her sciences precise and absolute. 472
473 On the huge bare walls of human nescience 473
474 Written round Nature's deep dumb hieroglyphs 474
475 She pens in clear demotic characters 475
476 The vast encyclopaedia of her thoughts; 476
477 An algebra of her mathematics' signs, 477
478 Her numbers and unerring formulas 478
479 She builds to clinch her summary of things. 479
480 On all sides runs as if in a cosmic mosque 480
481 Tracing the scriptural verses of her laws 481
482 The daedal of her patterned arabesques, 482
483 Art of her wisdom, artifice of her lore. 483
484 This art, this artifice are her only stock. 484
485 In her high works of pure intelligence, 485
486 In her withdrawal from the senses' trap, 486
487 There comes no breaking of the walls of mind, 487
488 There leaps no rending flash of absolute power, 488
489 There dawns no light of heavenly certitude. 489
490 A million faces wears her knowledge here 490
491 And every face is turbaned with a doubt. 491
492 All now is questioned, all reduced to nought. 492
493 Once monumental in their massive craft 493
494 Her old great mythic writings disappear 494
495 And into their place start strict ephemeral signs; 495
496 This constant change spells progress to her eyes: 496
497 Her thought is an endless march without a goal. 497
498 There is no summit on which she can stand 498
499 And see in a single glance the Infinite's whole. 499
500 An inconclusive play is Reason's toil. 500
501 Each strong idea can use her as its tool; 501
502 Accepting every brief she pleads her case. 502
503 Open to every thought, she cannot know. 503
504 The eternal Advocate seated as judge 504
505 Armours in logic's invulnerable mail 505
506 A thousand combatants for Truth's veiled throne 506
507 And sets on a high horse-back of argument 507
508 To tilt for ever with a wordy lance 508
509 In a mock tournament where none can win. 509
510 Assaying thought's values with her rigid tests 510
511 Balanced she sits on wide and empty air, 511
512 Aloof and pure in her impartial poise. 512
513 Absolute her judgments seem but none is sure; 513
514 Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal. 514
515 Although like sunbeams to our glow-worm mind 515
516 Her knowledge feigns to fall from a clear heaven, 516
517 Its rays are a lantern's lustres in the Night; 517
518 She throws a glittering robe on Ignorance. 518
519 But now is lost her ancient sovereign claim 519
520 To rule mind's high realm in her absolute right, 520
521 Bind thought with logic's forged infallible chain 521
522 Or see truth nude in a bright abstract haze. 522
523 A master and slave of stark phenomenon, 523
524 She travels on the roads of erring sight 524
525 Or looks upon a set mechanical world 525
526 Constructed for her by her instruments. 526
527 A bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact, 527
528 She drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter's dust 528
529 To reach utility's immense bazaar. 529
530 Apprentice she has grown to her old drudge; 530
531 An aided sense is her seeking's arbiter. 531
532 This now she uses as the assayer's stone. 532
533 As if she knew not facts are husks of truth, 533
534 The husks she keeps, the kernel throws aside. 534
535 An ancient wisdom fades into the past, 535
536 The ages' faith becomes an idle tale, 536
537 God passes out of the awakened thought, 537
538 An old discarded dream needed no more: 538
539 Only she seeks mechanic Nature's keys. 539
540 Interpreting stone-laws inevitable 540
541 She digs into Matter's hard concealing soil, 541
542 To unearth the processes of all things done. 542
543 A loaded huge self-worked machine appears 543
544 To her eye's eager and admiring stare, 544
545 An intricate and meaningless enginery 545
546 Of ordered fateful and unfailing Chance: 546
547 Ingenious and meticulous and minute, 547
548 Its brute unconscious accurate device 548
549 Unrolls an unerring march, maps a sure road; 549
550 It plans without thinking, acts without a will, 550
551 A million purposes serves with purpose none 551
552 And builds a rational world without a mind. 552
553 It has no mover, no maker, no idea: 553
554 Its vast self-action toils without a cause; 554
555 A lifeless Energy irresistibly driven, 555
556 Death's head on the body of Necessity, 556
557 Engenders life and fathers consciousness, 557
558 Then wonders why all was and whence it came. 558
559 Our thoughts are parts of the immense machine, 559
560 Our ponderings but a freak of Matter's law, 560
561 The mystic's lore was a fancy or a blind; 561
562 Of soul or spirit we have now no need: 562
563 Matter is the admirable Reality, 563
564 The patent unescapable miracle, 564
565 The hard truth of things, simple, eternal, sole. 565
566 A suicidal rash expenditure 566
567 Creating the world by a mystery of self-loss 567
568 Has poured its scattered works on empty Space; 568
569 Late shall the self-disintegrating Force 569
570 Contract the immense expansion it has made: 570
571 Then ends this mighty and unmeaning toil, 571
572 The Void is left bare, vacant as before. 572
573 Thus vindicated, crowned, the grand new Thought 573
574 Explained the world and mastered all its laws, 574
575 Touched the dumb roots, woke veiled tremendous powers; 575
576 It bound to service the unconscious djinns 576
577 That sleep unused in Matter's ignorant trance. 577
578 All was precise, rigid, indubitable. 578
579 But when on Matter's rock of ages based 579
580 A whole stood up firm and clear-cut and safe, 580
581 All staggered back into a sea of doubt; 581
582 This solid scheme melted in endless flux: 582
583 She had met the formless Power inventor of forms; 583
584 Suddenly she stumbled upon things unseen: 584
585 A lightning from the undiscovered Truth 585
586 Startled her eyes with its perplexing glare 587
587 And dug a gulf between the Real and Known 587
588 Till all her knowledge seemed an ignorance. 588
589 Once more the world was made a wonder-web, 589
590 A magic's process in a magical space, 590
591 An unintelligible miracle's depths 591
592 Whose source is lost in the Ineffable. 592
593 Once more we face the blank Unknowable. 593
594 In a crash of values, in a huge doom-crack, 594
595 In the sputter and scatter of her breaking work 595
596 She lost her clear conserved constructed world. 596
597 A quantum dance remained, a sprawl of chance 597
598 In Energy's stupendous tripping whirl: 598
599 A ceaseless motion in the unbounded Void 599
600 Invented forms without a thought or aim: 600
601 Necessity and Cause were shapeless ghosts; 601
602 Matter was an incident in being's flow, 602
603 Law but a clock-work habit of blind force. 603
604 Ideals, ethics, systems had no base 604
605 And soon collapsed or without sanction lived; 605
606 All grew a chaos, a heave and clash and strife. 606
607 Ideas warring and fierce leaped upon life; 607
608 A hard compression held down anarchy 608
609 And liberty was only a phantom's name: 609
610 Creation and destruction waltzed inarmed 610
611 On the bosom of a torn and quaking earth; 612
612 All reeled into a world of Kali's dance. 612
613 Thus tumbled, sinking, sprawling in the Void, 613
614 Clutching for props, a soil on which to stand, 614
615 She only saw a thin atomic Vast, 615
616 The rare-point sparse substratum universe 616
617 On which floats a solid world's phenomenal face. 617
618 Alone a process of events was there 618
619 And Nature's plastic and protean change 619
620 And, strong by death to slay or to create, 620
621 The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force. 621
622 One chance remained that here might be a power 622
623 To liberate man from the old inadequate means 623
624 And leave him sovereign of the earthly scene. 624
625 For Reason then might grasp the original Force 625
626 To drive her car upon the roads of Time. 626
627 All then might serve the need of the thinking race, 627
628 An absolute State found order's absolute, 628
629 To a standardised perfection cut all things, 629
630 In society build a just exact machine. 630
631 Then science and reason careless of the soul 631
632 Could iron out a tranquil uniform world, 632
633 Aeonic seekings glut with outward truths 633
634 And a single-patterned thinking force on mind, 634
635 Inflicting Matter's logic on Spirit's dreams 635
636 A reasonable animal make of man 636
637 And a symmetrical fabric of his life. 637
638 This would be Nature's peak on an obscure globe, 638
639 The grand result of the long ages' toil, 639
640 Earth's evolution crowned, her mission done. 640
641 So might it be if the spirit fell asleep; 641
642 Man then might rest content and live in peace, 642
643 Master of Nature who once her bondslave worked, 643
644 The world's disorder hardening into Law,— 644
645 If Life's dire heart arose not in revolt, 645
646 If God within could find no greater plan. 646
647 But many-visaged is the cosmic Soul; 647
648 A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate. 648
649 A sudden turn can come, a road appear. 649
650 A greater Mind may see a greater Truth, 650
651 Or we may find when all the rest has failed 651
652 Hid in ourselves the key of perfect change. 652
653 Ascending from the soil where creep our days, 653
654 Earth's consciousness may marry with the Sun, 654
655 Our mortal life ride on the spirit's wings, 655
656 Our finite thoughts commune with the Infinite. 656
657 In the bright kingdoms of the rising Sun 657
658 All is a birth into a power of light: 658
659 All here deformed guards there its happy shape, 659
660 Here all is mixed and marred, there pure and whole; 660
661 Yet each is a passing step, a moment's phase. 661
662 Awake to a greater Truth beyond her acts, 662
663 The mediatrix sat and saw her works 663
664 And felt the marvel in them and the force 664
665 But knew the power behind the face of Time: 665
666 She did the task, obeyed the knowledge given, 666
667 Her deep heart yearned towards great ideal things 667
668 And from the light looked out to wider light: 668
669 A brilliant hedge drawn round her narrowed her power; 669
670 Faithful to her limited sphere she toiled, but knew 670
671 Its highest, widest seeing was a half-search, 671
672 Its mightiest acts a passage or a stage. 672
673 For not by Reason was creation made 673
674 And not by Reason can the Truth be seen 674
675 Which through the veils of thought, the screens of sense 675
676 Hardly the spirit's vision can descry 676
677 Dimmed by the imperfection of its means: 677
678 The little Mind is tied to little things: 678
679 Its sense is but the spirit's outward touch, 679
680 Half-waked in a world of dark Inconscience; 680
681 It feels out for its beings and its forms 681
682 Like one left fumbling in the ignorant Night. 682
683 In this small mould of infant mind and sense 683
684 Desire is a child-heart's cry crying for bliss, 684
685 Our reason only a toys' artificer, 685
686 A rule-maker in a strange stumbling game. 686
687 But she her dwarf aides knew whose confident sight 687
688 A bounded prospect took for the far goal. 688
689 The world she has made is an interim report 689
690 Of a traveller towards the half-found truth in things 690
691 Moving twixt nescience and nescience. 691
692 For nothing is known while aught remains concealed; 692
693 The Truth is known only when all is seen. 693
694 Attracted by the All that is the One, 694
695 She yearns towards a higher light than hers; 695
696 Hid by her cults and creeds she has glimpsed God's face: 696
697 She knows she has but found a form, a robe, 697
698 But ever she hopes to see him in her heart 698
699 And feel the body of his reality. 699
700 As yet a mask is there and not a brow, 700
701 Although sometimes two hidden eyes appear: 701
702 Reason cannot tear off that glimmering mask, 702
703 Her efforts only make it glimmer more; 703
704 In packets she ties up the Indivisible; 704
705 Finding her hands too small to hold vast Truth 705
706 She breaks up knowledge into alien parts 706
707 Or peers through cloud-rack for a vanished sun: 707
708 She sees, not understanding what she has seen, 708
709 Through the locked visages of finite things 709
710 The myriad aspects of infinity. 710
711 One day the Face must burn out through the mask. 711
712 Our ignorance is Wisdom's chrysalis, 712
713 Our error weds new knowledge on its way, 713
714 Its darkness is a blackened knot of light; 714
715 Thought dances hand in hand with Nescience 715
716 On the grey road that winds towards the Sun. 716
717 Even while her fingers fumble at the knots 717
718 Which bind them to their strange companionship, 718
719 Into the moments of their married strife 719
720 Sometimes break flashes of the enlightening Fire. 720
721 Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone: 721
722 Armed they have come with the infallible word 722
723 In an investiture of intuitive light 723
724 That is a sanction from the eyes of God; 724
725 Announcers of a distant Truth they flame 725
726 Arriving from the rim of eternity. 726
727 A fire shall come out of the infinitudes, 727
728 A greater Gnosis shall regard the world 728
729 Crossing out of some far omniscience 729
730 On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone 730
731 To illumine the deep heart of self and things. 731
732 A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind, 732
733 Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close. 733
734 Above in a high breathless stratosphere, 734
735 Overshadowing the dwarfish trinity, 735
736 Lived, aspirants to a limitless Beyond, 736
737 Captives of Space, walled by the limiting heavens, 737
738 In the unceasing circuit of the hours 738
739 Yearning for the straight paths of eternity, 739
740 And from their high station looked down on this world 740
741 Two sun-gaze Daemons witnessing all that is. 741
742 A power to uplift the laggard world, 742
743 Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought 743
744 Unwont to tread the firm unchanging soil: 744
745 Accustomed to a blue infinity, 745
746 It planed in sunlit sky and starlit air; 746
747 It saw afar the unreached Immortal's home 747
748 And heard afar the voices of the Gods. 748
749 Iconoclast and shatterer of Time's forts, 749
750 Overleaping limit and exceeding norm, 750
751 It lit the thoughts that glow through the centuries 751
752 And moved to acts of superhuman force. 752
753 As far as its self-winged air-planes could fly, 753
754 Visiting the future in great brilliant raids 754
755 It reconnoitred vistas of dream-fate. 755
756 Apt to conceive, unable to attain, 756
757 It drew its concept-maps and vision-plans 757
758 Too large for the architecture of mortal Space. 758
759 Beyond in wideness where no footing is, 759
760 An imagist of bodiless Ideas, 760
761 Impassive to the cry of life and sense, 761
762 A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act. 762
763 Archangel of a white transcending realm, 763
764 It saw the world from solitary heights 764
765 Luminous in a remote and empty air. 765