Canto 3The Life Heavens
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Six Poems
But out from some Infinite born now came
Over giant snows and the still face
A quiver and colour of crimson flame,
5Fire-point in immensities of space.
Light-spear-tips revealed the mighty shape,
Tore the secret veil of the heart’s hold;
In that diamond heart the fires undrape,
Living core, a brazier of gold.
10This was the closed mute and burning source
Whence were formed the worlds and their star-dance;
Life sprang, a self-rapt inconscient Force,
Love, a blazing seed, from that flame-trance.
The Life Heavens
15A life of intensities wide, immune
Floats behind the earth and her life-fret,
A magic of realms mastered by spell and rune,
Grandiose, blissful, coloured, increate.
A music there wanders mortal ear
20Hears not, seizing, intimate, remote,
Wide-winged in soul-spaces, fire-clear,
Heaping note on enrapturing new note.
Forms deathless there triumph, hues divine
Thrill with nets of glory the moved air;
25Each sense is an ecstasy, love the sign
Of one outblaze of godhead that two share.
The peace of the senses, the senses’ stir
On one harp are joined mysteries; pain
Transmuted is ravishment’s minister,
30A high note and a fiery refrain.
Pondicherry, c. 1927–1947
All things are a harmony faultless, pure;
Grief is not nor stain-wound of desire;
The heart-beats are a cadence bright and sure
35Of Joy’s quick steps, too invincible to tire.
A Will there, a Force, a magician Mind
Moves, and builds at once its delight-norms,
The marvels it seeks for surprised, outlined,
Hued, alive, a cosmos of fair forms,
40Sounds, colours, joy-flamings. Life lies here
Dreaming, bound to the heavens of its goal,
In the clasp of a Power that enthrals to sheer
Bliss and beauty body and rapt soul.
My spirit sank drowned in the wonder surge:
45Screened, withdrawn was the greatness it had sought;
Lost was the storm-stress and the warrior urge,
Lost the titan winging of the thought.
It lay at ease in a sweetness of heaven-sense
Delivered from grief, with no need left to aspire,
50Free, self-dispersed in voluptuous innocence,
Lulled and borne into roseate cloud-fire.
But suddenly there soared a dateless cry,
Deep as Night, imperishable as Time;
It seemed Death’s dire appeal to Eternity,
55Earth’s outcry to the limitless Sublime.
“O high seeker of immortality,
Is there not, ineffable, a bliss
Too vast for these finite harmonies,
Too divine for the moment’s unsure kiss?