Canto 40The Godhead
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Sonnets
The Universal Incarnation
There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun,
A Bliss in the heart’s crypt grown fiery white,
5The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,
A Silence on the mountains of delight,
A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees;
A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth’s pain;
A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
10The incarnate Godhead in the body of man.
Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,
Our strength a parody of the Immortal’s power,
Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal’s way
Hunting the unseizable beauty of an hour.
15Only on the heart’s veiled door the word of flame
Is written, the secret and tremendous Name.
The Godhead
I sat behind the dance of Danger’s hooves
In the shouting street that seemed a futurist’s whim,
20And suddenly felt, exceeding Nature’s grooves,
In me, enveloping me the body of Him.
Above my head a mighty head was seen,
A face with the calm of immortality
And an omnipotent gaze that held the scene
25In the vast circle of its sovereignty.
His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze;
The world was in His heart and He was I:
I housed in me the Everlasting’s peace,
The strength of One whose substance cannot die.
30The moment passed and all was as before;
Only that deathless memory I bore.