Canto 62Symbol 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