Canto 105Symbol Moon
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Once again thou hast climbed, O moon, like a white fire on the glimmering
edge,
Floating up, floating up from the haunted verge of a foam-tremulous
sea.
5Mystic-horned here crossing the grey-hued listless nights and days,
Spirit-silver craft from the ports of eternity.
Overhead with thy plunging and swaying prow thou fleetest, O ship of the
gods,
Glorifying the clouds with thy halo, but our hearts with a rose-red
10rapture shed from the secret breasts of love;
Almost thou seemest the very bliss that floats in opaline air over heaven’s
golden roads,
Embodied here to capture our human lives like a nectar face of light
in the doubtful blue above.
15Dumbly blithe, shuddering, the air is filled from thy cup of pale mysterious
wine:
Gleam quivers to longing gleam; and the faery torches lit for Night’s
mysteries are set in her niches stark and deep;
The inconscient gulfs stir and are vaguely thrilled, while their unheard
20voices cry to the Wonder-light new-seen
Till descending its ray shall unlock with a wizard rod of fire the dumb
recesses of sleep.
Bright and alone in a white-foam-glinted delicate dim-blue ocean of sky,
Ever thou runst and thou floatest as a magic drifting bowl
25Flung by the hand of a drunken god in the river of Time goes tossing by,
O icon and chalice of spiritual light whose spots are like Nature’s
shadow stains on a white and immaculate soul.
How like one frail and haunted thou com’st, O white moon, at my lonely
call from thy deep sky-covert heights,
30A voyager carrying through the myriad-isled archipelago of the
spear-pointed questioning stars
The circle of the occult argent Yes of the Invisible to the dim query of the
yearning witness lights
That burn in the dense vault of Matter’s waking mind — innumerable,
35solitary and sparse.
A disk of a greater Ray that shall come, a white-fire rapture and girdling
rose of love,
Timelessly thou driftest, O soundless silver boat that set out from the
far Unknown,
40Moon-crystal of silver or gold of some spirit joy spun by Time in his dense
aeonic groove,
A messenger and bearer of an unembodied beauty and unseized bliss
advancing over our life’s wan sea — significant, bright and alone.