Opening Remarks
Human life is a mixed tissue. We are as if shut in a material casement that screens our deeper and higher aspects.
The light we are
The earth you tread is a border screened from heaven;
The life you lead conceals the light you are.
The earthly life is a thick screen that shuts us from the Divine Presence and the divine possibilities within us.
The nympholepts of the ecstasy
Immortal Powers sweep flaming past your doors;
Far-off upon your tops the god-chant sounds
While to exceed yourselves thought’s trumpets call,
Heard by a few, but fewer dare aspire,
The nympholepts of the ecstasy and the blaze.
Human beings have visitations from the gods and the higher powers and the call divine chanting upon the heights of our being. We are pulled towards the heights by the thoughts blazing from an inner sun. A higher supernature calls us towards its sweet ecstasies but few are they who dare and aspire.
An epic of hope and failure
An epic of hope and failure breaks earth’s heart;
Her force and will exceed her form and fate.
But earth nature riddled with hope and failure, doubts falls back disappointed unable to exceed her present fate.
Goddess in a net of transience
A goddess in a net of transience caught,
Self-bound in the pastures of death she dreams of life,
Self-racked with the pains of hell aspires to joy,
And builds to hope her altars of despair,
Knows that one high step might enfranchise all
And, suffering, looks for greatness in her sons.
Earth is a goddess caught up in a net of imperfection and transience in the fields of death. Yet she dreams of life, racked up with hell aspires to joy, builds her hopes on the altars of despair and through present suffering looks for greatness to be born in the future.
The invisible Grandeur
But dim in human hearts the ascending fire,
The invisible Grandeur sits unworshipped there;
Man sees the Highest in a limiting form
Or looks upon a Person, hears a Name.
But the fire of aspiration does not rise high and the Divine Presence remains an invisible unworshipped Grandeur. Man’s vision limits the Highest to a form and name rather than reach out to the vaster Divine Truth behind and beyond that is represented and being expressed.
Ignorant Powers
He turns for little gains to ignorant Powers
Or kindles his altar lights to a demon face.
Man instead prefers to turn towards inferior forces of nature and demoniac cults to satisfy his desires and greed.
Ignorance fathering his pain
He loves the Ignorance fathering his pain.
It is this ignorance that is the cause of human suffering.
Closing Remarks
Thus we are shown the riddle and the paradox of human life that arises due to the coverings and coats of ignorance in which truth is imprisoned and which is the cause of all our suffering and pains.
