Canto 1Musa Spiritus
Book 15. Part Six - Baroda and Pondicherry Circa 1902 – 1936
O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.
5Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter’s sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind,
10Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart’s sea.
15Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice;
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
20Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candle flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
25Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;