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I O WHITE Priest of Eternity, around | |
| Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise | |
| Of the earth’s immemorial sacrifice | |
| To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; | |
| O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, | 5 |
| First-born of Asia whose maternal throes | |
| Seem changed now to a million human woes, | |
| Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound | |
| One sigh of all the mystery in thee found. | |
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II For in this world too much is overclear, | 10 |
| Immortal Ministrant to many lands, | |
| From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands | |
| Rivers that each libation poured expands. | |
| Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire! | |
| Thy people fathom life and find it dire, | 15 |
| Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire | |
| To live again, though in Illusion’s sphere, | |
| Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear. | |
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III Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, | |
| Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls | 20 |
| In strange austerity, whose trance appalls, | |
| Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. | |
| Continue still thy silence high and sure, | |
| That something beyond fleeting may endure— | |
| Something that shall forevermore allure | 25 |
| Imagination on to mystic flights | |
| Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights. | |
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IV Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes | |
| Of lifted granite round with reachless snows. | |
| Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows | 30 |
| Of all the nations envy thy repose. | |
| Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled. | |
| Be that alone on earth which has not failed. | |
| Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed, | |
| But since primeval Power upreared thy heights | 35 |
| Has stood above all deaths and all delights. | |
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V And though thy loftier Brother shall be King, | |
| High-priest art thou to Brahma unrevealed, | |
| While thy white sanctity forever sealed | |
| In icy silence leaves desire congealed. | 40 |
| In ghostly ministrations to the sun, | |
| And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, | |
| Be holy still, till East to West has run, | |
| And till no sacrificial suffering | |
| On any shrine is left to tell life’s sting. | 45 |
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