Trance of Waiting

Lone on my summits of calm I have brooded with voices around me,
Murmurs of silence that steep mind in a luminous sleep,
Whispers from things beyond thought in the Secrecy flame-white for ever,
Unscanned heights that reply seek from the inconscient deep.
Distant below me the ocean of life with its passionate surges
Pales like a pool that is stirred by the wings of a shadowy bird.
Thought has flown back from its wheelings and stoopings, the nerve-beat of living
Stills; my spirit at peace bathes in a mighty release.
Wisdom supernal looks down on me, Knowledge mind cannot measure
Light that no vision can render garments the silence with splendour.
Filled with a rapturous Presence the crowded spaces of being
Tremble with the Fire that knows, thrill with the might of repose.
Earth is now girdled with trance and Heaven is put round her for vesture.
Wings that are brilliant with fate sleep at Eternity’s gate.
Time waits, vacant, the Lightning that kindles, the Word that transfigures;
Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode.
All waits hushed for the fiat to come and the tread of the Eternal;
Passion of a bliss yet to be sweeps from Infinity’s sea.

Notes on Text
Circa 1934. The first draft of this poem was written around the same time as “Jivanmukta”, which is dated 1934. Two handwritten manuscripts precede the On Quantitative Metre revision work in 1942.