Mounts in a line of rapture to the skies,
Absorbed in its own happy urge it lives,
Sufficient to itself, yet turned to all.
It has no seen communion with its world,
No open converse with surrounding things.
There is a oneness native and occult
That needs no instruments and erects no form;
In unison it grows with all that is,
All contacts it assumes into its trance,
Laugh-tossed consents to the wind’s kiss and takes
Transmutingly the shocks of sun and breeze:
Transmutingly the shocks of sun and breeze:
A blissful yearning riots in its leaves,
A magic passion trembles in its blooms,
Its boughs aspire in hushed felicity.
An occult godhead of this beauty is cause,
The spirit and intimate guest of all this charm,
This sweetness’s priestess and this reverie’s muse.
Invisibly protected from our sense
The Dryad lives drenched in a deeper ray
And feels another air of storms and calms
And quivers inwardly with mystic rain.
*This at a heavenlier height was shown in her.*
My understanding: it speaks about when the first life appeared. Describing trees as living beings absorbed in a trance. Also, in their inner spirit, an occult Godhead is the cause, and the heavenly nymph, the Dryad, lives, but our senses don’t catch it. But this heavenly image is shown to the child of flame.
[The Birth and Childhood of the Flame: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/the-birth-and-childhood-of-the-flame#p58]
This passage, comparable in beauty perhaps only to Kalidasa, describes the emergence of life spontaneously in the plant, spreading joy and beauty to all, mounting upwards and living in native oneness, carrying hidden within itself the Spirit of Beauty and celestial charm. The Master poet compares this with the Divine Mother born as a little baby. She lives and acts in a native oneness, radiates beauty and joy, seems a mounting fire of aspiration climbing to the heights and, carries hidden in her heart the occult Divine Presence which was the Source of all. It is the picture you have seen in the Dispensary on my desk. 🖼️
Affectionately,
Alok Da
