-02_Book 4 Canto 1 The Birth and Childhood of The Flame.htm

AMAENAD of the cycles of desire

Around a Light she must notdare to touch,

Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal

Earthfollowed the endless journey of the Sun.

A mind but half-awakein the swing of the void

On the bosom of Inconscience dreamedout life

And bore this finite world of thought and deed

Acrossthe immobile trance of the Infinite.

A vast immutable silencewith her ran:

Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel,

Shecommuned with the mystic heart in Space.

Amid the ambiguousstillness of the stars

She moved towards some undisclosedevent

And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time.

Inceaseless motion round the purple rim

Dayafter day sped by like coloured spokes,

Andthrough a glamour of shifting hues of air

The seasons drew inlinked significant dance

The symbol pageant of the changingyear.

Across the burning langour of the soil

Paced Summerwith his pomp of violent noons

And stamped his tyranny oftorrid light

And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

Nextthrough its fiery swoon or clotted knot

Rain-tide burst inupon torn wings of heat,

Startled with lightnings air’sunquiet drowse,

Lashed with life-giving streams the torpidsoil,

Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark

Thestar-defended doors of heaven’s dim sleep,

Or fromthe gold eye of her paramour

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Coveredwith packed cloud-veils the earth’s brownface.

Annies of revolution crossed the time-field,

Theclouds’ unending march besieged the world,

Tempests’pronunciamentos claimed the sky

And thunder drums announcedthe embattled gods.

A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas

Thedense maned monsoon rode neighing through earth’s hours:

Thicknow the emissary javelins:

Enormouslightnings split the horizon’s rim

And, hurled from thequarters as from contending camps,

Married heaven’s edgessteep and bare and blind:

Asurge and hiss and onset of huge rain,

The long straightsleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,

Throngs ofwind-faces, rushing of wind-feet

Hurrying swept through theprone afflicted plains:

Heaven’swaters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.

Then allwas a swift stride, a sibilant race,

Orall was tempest’s shout and water’s fall.

Adimness sagged on the grey floor of day,

Itsdingy sprawling length joined morn to eve,

Wallowingin sludge and shower it reached black dark.

Daya half darkness wore as its dulldress.

Light looked into dawn’s tarnished glass and met

Itsown face there, twin to a half-lit night’s:

Downpourand drip and seeping mist swayed all

And turned dry soil tobog and reeking mud:

Earthwas a quagmire, heaven a dismal block.

Nonesaw through dank drenched wicks the dungeon sun.

Evenwhen no turmoil vexed air’s sombre rest,

Ora faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds

Asa sad smile gleams veiled by returning tears,

Allpromised brightness failed at once denied

Or,soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope.

Thena last massive deluge thrashed dead mire

Anda subsiding mutter left all still,

Oronly the muddy creep of sinking floods

Oronly a whisper and green toss of trees.

Earth’smood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,

Thehours went by with slow contented tread:

Awide and tranquil air remembered peace,

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Earthwas the comrade of a happy sun.

A calmness neared as of theapproach of God,

A light of musing trance lit soil andsky.

And an identity and ecstasy

Filled meditation’ssolitary heart.

A dream loitered in the dumb mind ofSpace,

Time opened its chambers of felicity,

An exaltationentered and a hope:

An inmost self looked up to a heavenlierheight,

An inmost thought kindled a hidden flame

And theinner sight adored an unseen sun.

Three thoughtful seasonspassed with shining tread

And scanning one by one the pregnanthours

Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,

Thevigil of some mighty birth to come.

Autumn led in the glory ofher moons

And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools

AndWinter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands

On Nature’sbosom still in a half sleep

And deepened with hues of lax andmellow ease

The tranquil beauty of the waning year.

ThenSpring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves

And caught theearth-bride in his eager clasp;

His adventwas a fire of irised hues,

His arms were a circle of thearrival of joy.

His voice was a call to the Transcendent’ssphere

Whose secret touch upon our mortal lives

Keeps evernew the thrill that made the world,

Remoulds an ancientsweetness to new shapes

And guards intact unchanged by deathand Time

The answer of our hearts to Nature’s charm

Andkeeps for ever new, yet still the same,

The throb that everwakes to the old delight

And beauty and rapture and the joy tolive.

His coming brought the magic and the spell,

At histouch life’s tired heart grew glad and young;

He made joy awilling prisoner in her breast.

His grasp was a young god’supon earth’s limbs:

Changed by the passion of his divineoutbreak

He made her body beautiful withhis kiss.

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Impatientfor felicity he came,

High-fluting with the coil’s happyvoice,

His peacock turban trailing on the trees,

His breathwas a warm summons to delight,

The dense voluptuous azure washis gaze.

A soft celestial urge surprised the blood

Richwith the instinct of God’s sensuous joys;

Revealedin beauty, a cadence was abroad

Insistent on therapture-thrill in life:

Immortalmovements touched the fleeting hours.

Agodlike packed intensity of sense

Madeit a passionate pleasure even to breathe;

Allsights and voices wove a single charm.

The life of theenchanted globe became

A storm of sweetness and of light andsong,

A revel of colour and of ecstasy,

A hymn of rays, alitany of cries:

Astrain of choral priestly music sang

And, swung on the swayingcenser of the trees,

A sacrifice of perfume filled thehours.

Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,

Pure likethe breath of an unstained desire

White jasmines haunted theenamoured air,

Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice

Ofthe love-maddened coil, and the brown bee

Mutteredin fragrance mid the honey-buds.

The sunlight was a greatgod’s golden smile.

All Nature was at beauty’s festival.

    In this high signal moment of the gods

Answering earth’syearning and her cry for bliss

A greatness from our othercountries came.

A silence in the noise of earthlythings

Immutably revealed the secret Word,

A mightierinflux filled the oblivious clay:

Alamp was lit, a sacred image made.

Amediating ray had touched the earth

Bridgingthe gulf between man’s mind and God’s;

Translatingheaven into a human shape

Its brightness linked our transienceto the Unknown.

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Aspirit of its celestial source aware y

Descended into earth’simperfect mould

And wept not fallen to mortality,

Butlooked on all with large and tranquil eyes.

One had returnedfrom the transcendent planes

And bore anew the load of mortalbreath,

Who had striven of old with our darkness and our pain;

Shetook again her divine unfinished task:

Survivorof death and the aeonic years,

Oncemore with her fathomless heart she fronted Time.

Againthere was renewed, again revealed

Theancient closeness by earth-vision veiled,

Thesecret contact broken off in Time,

Aconsanguinity of earth and heaven,

Betweenthe human portion toiling here

Andan as yet unborn and limitless Force.

Againthe mystic deep attempt began,

Thedaring wager of the cosmic game.

Forsince upon this blind -and whirling globe

Earth-plasmfirst quivered with the illumining mind

Andlife invaded the material sheath

AfflictingInconscience with the need to feel,

Sincein Infinity’s silence woke a word,

A Mother wisdom works in Nature's breast

To pour delight onthe heart of toil and want

And press perfection on life’s stumbling powers,

Imposeheaven-sentience on the obscure abyss

And make dumb Matterconscious of its God.

Althoughour fallen minds forget to climb,

Although our human stuffresists or breaks,

She keeps her will that hopes to diviniseclay;

Failurecannot repress, defeat o’erthrow;

Timecannot weary her nor the Void subdue,

The ages have not madeher passion less,

No victory she admits of Death orFate.

Always she drives the souls to new attempt;

Alwaysher magical infinitude

Forcesto aspire the inert brute elements;

Asone who has all infinity to waste,

She scatters the seed ofthe Etemal's strength

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Ona half-animate and crumbling mould,

Plants heaven’s delight inthe heart’s passionate mire,

Pours godhead’s seekings into abare beast frame,

Hides immortality in a mask of death,

Once more that Will put on an earthly shape.

A Mind empoweredfrom Truth’s immutable seat

Was framed for vision andinterpreting act

And instruments were sovereignly designed

Toexpress divinity in terrestrial signs.

Outlined by thepressure of this new descent

A lovelier body formed than earthhad known.

As yet a prophecy only and a hint,

The glowingarc of a charmed unseen whole,

It came into the sky of mortallife

Bright like the crescent horn of a gold moon

Returningin a faint illumined eve.

At first glimmering like an unshapedidea

Passive she lay sheltered in wordless sleep,

Involvedand drowned in Matter’s giant trance,

An infant heart of thedeep-caved world-plan

In cradle of divine inconsciencerocked

By the universal ecstasy of the suns.

Some missionedPower in the half-wakened frame

Nursed a transcendent birth’sdumb glorious seed

For which this vivid tenement was made.

Butsoon the link of soul with form grew sure;

Floodedwas the dim cave with slow conscient light,

The seed grew intoa delicate marvellous bud,

The bud disclosed a great andheavenly bloom.

At once she seemed to found a mightierrace.

Arrived upon the strange and dubious globe

The childremembering inly a far home

Lived guarded in her spirit’sluminous cell,

Alone mid men in her diviner kind.

Even inher childish movements could be felt

The nearness of a lightstill kept from earth,

Feelings that only eternity couldshare,

Thoughts natural and native to the gods.

As needingnothing but its own rapt flight

Her nature dwelt in a strongseparate air

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Likea strange bird with large rich-coloured breast

That sojournson a secret fruited bough

Lost in the emerald glory of thewoods

Or flies above divine unreachable tops.

Harmoniouslyshe impressed the earth with heaven.

Aligned to a swift rhythmof sheer delight

And singing to themselves her days went by;

Eachminute was a throb of beauty’s heart,

The hours were tuned toa sweet-toned content

Which asked for nothing, but took alllife gave

Sovereignly as her nature’s inborn right.

Nearwas her spirit to its parent Sun,

The Breath within to theeternal joy.

The first fair life that breaks from Nature’sswoon,

Mountsin a line of rapture to the skies;

Absorbedin its own happy urge it lives,

Sufficientto itself, yet turned to all.

Ithas no seen communion with its world,

Noopen converse with surrounding things.

Thereis a oneness native and occult

Thatneeds no instruments and erects no form;

Inunison it grows with all that is,

All contacts it assumes intoits trance,

Laugh-tossed consents to the wind’s kiss andtakes

Transmutingly the shocks of sun and breeze:

Ablissful yearning riots in its leaves,

Amagic passion trembles in its blooms,

Itsboughs aspire in hushed felicity.

Anoccult godhead of this beauty is cause,

Thespirit and intimate guest of all this charm,

Thissweetness’s priestess and this reverie’s muse.

Invisiblyprotected from our sense

TheDryad lives drenched in a deeper ray

Andfeels another air of storms and calms

Andquivers inwardly with mystic rain.

Thisat a heavenlier height was shown in her.

Evenwhen she bent to meet earth’s intimacies

Herspirit kept the stature of the gods;

Itstooped but was not lost in Matter’s reign.

A world translatedwas her gleaming mind,

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Andmarvel-mooned bright crowding fantasies

Fedwith spiritual sustenance of dreams

Theideal goddess in her house of gold.

Awareof forms to which our eyes are closed,

Consciousof nearnesses we cannot feel,

ThePower within her shaped her moulding sense

Indeeper figures than our surface types.

Aninvisible sunlight ran within her veins

Andflooded her brain with heavenly brilliancies

Thatwoke a wider sight than earth could know.

Outlinedin the sincerity of that ray

Herspringing childlike thoughts were richly turned

Intoluminous patterns of her soul’s deep truth,

Andfrom her eyes she cast another look

Onall around her than man’s ignorant view.

Allobjects were to her shapes of living selves

Andshe perceived a message from her kin

Ineach awakening touch of outward things.

Eachwas a symbol power, a vivid flash

Inthe circuit of infinities half-known;

Nothingwas alien or inanimate,

Nothing without its meaning or itscall.

For with a greater Nature she was one.

Asfrom the soil sprang glory of branch and flower,

As from theanimal’s life rose thinking man,

A new epiphany appeared inher

A mind of light, a life of rhythmic force,

A bodyinstinct with hidden divinity

Prepared an image of the cominggod;

Andwhen the slow rhyme of the expanding years

And the richmurmurous swarm-work of the days

Had honey-packed her senseand filled her limbs,

Accomplishing the moon-orb of hergrace,

Self-guarded in the silence of her strength

Hersolitary greatness was not less.

Nearer the godhead to thesurface pressed,

A sun replacing childhood’s nebula

Sovereignin a blue and lonely sky.

Upward it rose to grasp the humanscene:

Thestrong Inhabitant turned to watch her field,

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Alovelier light assumed her spirit brow

And sweet and solemngrew her musing gaze,

Celestial-human deep warm slumbrousfires

Woke in the long fringed glory of her eyes

Likealtar-burnings in a mysteried shrine.

Out of those crystalwindows gleamed a will

That brought a large significance tolife.

Holding her forehead’s candid stainless space

Behindthe student arch a noble power

Of wisdom looked from light ontransient things.

A scout of victory in a vigil tower,

Heraspiration called high destiny down,

A silent warrior paced inher city of strength

Inviolate, guarding Truth’s diamondthrone.

A nectarous haloed moon her passionate heart

Lovedall and spoke no word and made no sign,

But kept her bosom’srapturous secrecy

A blissful ardent moved and voicelessworld.

Proud, swift and joyful ran the wave of life

Withinher like a stream in Paradise.

Many high gods dwelt in onebeautiful home;

Yet was her nature’s orb a perfect whole,

Harmoniouslike a chant with many tones,

Immense and various like auniverse.

The body that held this greatness seemed almost

Animage made of heaven’s transparent light.

Its charm recalledthings seen in vision’s hours,

A golden bridge spanning afaery flood,

A moon-touched palm tree single by alake

Companion of the wide and glimmering peace,

A murmuras of leaves in Paradise

Moving when feet of the Immortalspass,

A fiery halo over sleeping hills,

A strange andstarry head alone in Night.

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