Canto 32The Kingdom Within
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Sonnets
The Yogi on the Whirlpool
On a dire whirlpool in the hurrying river,
A life-stilled statue naked, bronze, severe,
5He kept the posture of a deathless seer
Unshaken by the mad water’s leap and shiver.
Thought could not think in him, flesh could not quiver;
The feet of Time could not adventure here;
Only some unknown Power nude and austere,
10Only a Silence mighty to deliver.
His spirit world-wide and companionless,
Seated above the torrent of the days
On the deep eddy that our being forms,
Silent sustained the huge creation’s stress,
15Unchanged supporting Nature’s rounds and norms,
Immobile background of the cosmic race.
The Kingdom Within
There is a kingdom of the spirit’s ease.
It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,
20Foam from the world-sea or spray whispers caught,
With which we build mind’s shifting symmetries,
Nor in life’s stuff of passionate unease,
Nor the heart’s unsure emotions frailly wrought
Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon brought to nought,
25Nor 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
30That veils it from its ignorant minister
The grandeur of its free eternal hour.