Audio

Existence' self was shadowed by a doubt; Almost it seemed a lotus-leaf afloat On a nude pool of cosmic Nothingness.

Then suddenly a luminous finger fell On all things seen or touched or heard or felt And showed his mind that nothing could be known; That must be reached from which all knowledge comes.

An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer And Master of its multitude of forms, It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds, The witness Lord of Nature's myriad acts Consenting to the movements of her Force.

All there was an intense but partial light. In each a seraph-winged high-browed Idea United all knowledge by one master thought, Persuaded all action to one golden sense, All powers subjected to a single power And made a world where it could reign alone, An absolute ideal's perfect home.

There are the imperishable beatitudes. A million lotuses swaying on one stem, World after coloured and ecstatic world Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.

Above the spirit cased in mortal sense Are superconscious realms of heavenly peace, Below, the Inconscient's sullen dim abyss, Between, behind our life, the deathless Rose.

A new beginning flowers in word and laugh, A new charm brings back the old extreme delight: He is lost in her, she is his heaven here. Truth smiled upon the gracious golden game.

Here the mind's wisdom stopped; it felt complete; For nothing more was left to think or know: In a spiritual zero it sat throned And took its vast silence for the Ineffable.