The following lines, are perfect as an exposition of spiritual
consciousness in which the lesser self has become submerged:
"Underneath the shade of the trees, myself passed into somewhere as a
cloud.
I see my soul floating upon the face of the deep, nay the faceless face
of the deepless deep--
Ah, the seas of loneliness.
The silence-waving waters, ever shoreless, bottomless, colorless, have no
shadow of my passing soul.
I, without wisdom, without foolishness, without goodness, without
badness--am like God, a negative god at least."
The almost perpetual state of spiritual consciousness in which the young
poet lived at this time is apparent in the following lines:
"When I am lost in the deep body of the mist on a hill,
The universe seems built with me as its pillar.
Am I the god upon the face of the deep, nay--
The deepless deepness in the beginning?"
And the following, possible of comprehension only to one who has glimpsed
the eternal verity of man's spiritual reality, and the shadow-like quality
of the external; could have been written only by one freed from the bonds
of illusion:
"The mystic silence of the moon,
Gradually revived in me immortality;
The sorrow that gently stirred
Was melancholy-sweet; sorrow is higher
Far than joy, the sweetest sorrow is supreme
Amid all the passions.
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