Canto 6The Birth of Sin
Book 4. Part Four - Calcutta and Chandernagore 1907 – 1910
Short Poems
The Birth of Sin
Lucifer
Sirioth
5LUCIFER
What mighty and ineffable desire
Impels thee, Sirioth? Thy accustomed calm
Is potently subverted and the eyes
That were a god’s in sweet tranquillity,
10Confess a human warmth, a troubled glow.
SIRIOTH
Lucifer, son of Morning, Angel! thou
Art mightiest of the architects of fate.
To thee is given with thy magic gaze
15Compelling mortals as thou leanst sublime
From heaven’s lucent walls, to sway the world.
Is thy felicity of lesser date,
Prince of the patient and untiring gods,
The gods who work? Dost thou not ever feel
20Angelic weariness usurp the place
Where the great flame and the august desire
Were wont to urge thee on? To me it seems
That our eternity is far too long
For service and there is a word, a thought,
25More godlike.
LUCIFER
Sirioth, I will speak the word.
Is it not Power?
SIRIOTH
30No, Lucifer, ’tis Love.
Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907–1910
LUCIFER
Love? It was love that for a trillion years
Gave me the instinct and immense demand
35For service, for activity. It fades.
Another and more giant passion comes
Striding upon me. I behold the world
Immeasurably vast, I see the heavens
Full of an azure joy and majesty,
40I see the teeming millions of the stars.
Sirioth, how came the Master of the world
To be the master? Did He seize control
Pushing some ancient weaker sovereign down
From sway immemorable? Did He come
45By peaceful ways, permission or inheritance,
To what He is today? Or if indeed
He is for ever and for ever rules,
Are there no bounds to His immense domain,
No obscure corner of unbounded space
50Forgotten by His fate, that I may seize
And make myself an empire as august,
Enjoy a like eternity of rule?
SIRIOTH
Angel, these thoughts are mighty as thyself.
55But wilt thou then rebel? If He be great
To conquer and to punish, what of thee?
Eternity of dreadful poignant pain
May be thy fate and not eternal rule.
LUCIFER
60Better than still to serve desirelessly,
Pursued by a compulsion dull and fierce,
Looking through all vast time for one brief hour
Of rest, of respite, but instead to find
Iron necessity and pant in vain
65For space, for room, for freedom.
Short Poems
SIRIOTH
Thou intendest?
LUCIFER
70Sirioth, I do not yet intend; I feel.
SIRIOTH
For me the sense of active force within
Set me to work, as the stars move, the sun
Resistless flames through space, the stormwind runs.
75But I have felt a touch as sweet as spring,
And I have heard a music of delight
Maddening the heart with the sweet honied stabs
Of delicate intolerable joy.
Where, where is One to feel the answering bliss?
80Lucifer, thou from love beganst thy toil.
What love?
LUCIFER
Desire august to help, to serve.
SIRIOTH
85That is not mine. To embrace, to melt and mix
Two beings into one, to roll the spirit
Tumbling into a surge of common joy, —
’Tis this I seek.
LUCIFER
90Will He permit?
Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907–1910
SIRIOTH
A bar
I feel, a prohibition. Someone used
95A word I could not grasp and called it sin.
LUCIFER
The word is new, even as these things are.
SIRIOTH
I know not who he was. He laughed and said,
100“Sin, sin is born into the world, revolt
And change, in Sirioth and in Lucifer,
The evening and the morning star. Rejoice,
O world!” And I beheld as in a dream
Leaping from out thy brain and into mine
105A woman beautiful, of grandiose mien,
Yet terrible, alarming and instinct
With nameless menace. And the world was full
With clashing and with cries. It seemed to me
Angels and Gods and men strove violently
110To touch her robe, to occupy the place
Her beautiful and ominous feet had trod,
Crying, “Daughter of Lucifer, be ours,
O sweet, adorable and mighty Sin!”
Therefore I came to thee.
115LUCIFER
Sirioth, await
Her birth, if she must be. For this I know,
Necessity rules all the infinite world,
And even He perhaps submits unknown
120To a compulsion. When the time is ripe,
We will consult once more what we shall do.