Spiritual Poetry

Omgoodnes...this is beautiful:

Temple of Love

The temple of love is not love itself;
True love is the treasure,
Not the walls about it.
Do not admire the decoration,
But involve yourself in the essence,
The perfume that invades and touches you-
The beginning and the end.
Discovered, this replace all else,
The apparent and the unknowable.
Time and space are slaves to this presence.

By: Rumi

 

He Asked For Charity

God came to my house and asked for charity.
And I fell on my knees and
cried, “Beloved,
what may I
give?"

“Just love,” He said.

“Just love.”

-St Francis of Assisi

 

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.





By: Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

The Beauty of the Heart

The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one when
your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning.

By: Rumi
From: Mathnawi II, 716-718

 

The Beauty of a Rose

No more brooding,
No more despondency.
Your life shall become
The beauty of a rose,
The song of the dawn,
The dance of twilight.

By: Sri Chinmoy

 

On The Seashore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead
And the restless water is boisterous.
On the seashore of endless worlds
The children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand,
And they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave
Their boats and smilingly float them
On the vast deep.
Children have their play on the
Seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim,
They know not how to cast nets.
Pearl-fishers dive for pearls,
Merchants sail in their ships,
While children gather pebbles
And scatter them again.
They seek not for hidden treasures,
They know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter,
And pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
Death-dealing waves sing
Meaningless ballads to the children,
Even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with children,
And pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
Tempest roams in the pathless sky,
Ships are wrecked in the trackless water,
Death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the
Great meeting of children.


- Rabindranath Tagore

 

The following is from Sri Aurobindo's 'Savitri'. The discerning reader will note how he seems to see the death of Christ in a novel way - rather than paying for the sins of mankind, it is payment for the adverse conditions imposed on all beings by the creation of the world.


"He who would save the race must share its pain:
This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge.
The Great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time's shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain;
They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,
On their shoulders they must bear man's load of fate.
Heaven's riches they bring, their sufferings count the price
Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.
The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind
His will has bound to death and struggling life
That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.
The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed salvation's testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
The Deity compensates the creature's claim,
The Creator bears the law of pain and death;
A retribution smites the incarnate God.
His love has paved the mortal's road to Heaven:
He has given his life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance.
It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed;
His escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right's acknowledgment;
Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour's way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body's death his soul's vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.
Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls,
His crucified voice proclaims, `I, I am God;'
`Yes, all is God,' peals back Heaven's deathless call.
The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,
The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:
All shall discover God in self and things. "

 

Nirvana

All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief,
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.

Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still.
Replaces all, - what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.





By: Sri Aurobindo

 

Oh what was there in that candles light?
Oh, you struck fire in my heart and I have been
consumed.
Oh friend, come quickly.
From the face of the heart, the Divine has appeared.
Nothing can help me but that beauty.
Once, at dawn, my heart was shattered by your
sweet odour!
My soul heard something from your soul.
When my heart drank water from your spring
it drowned in you, and was born away in its current.

Jalaludin Rumi.

 

Some Fill With Each Good Rain
There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,
That "love" is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that.

by: Hafiz

 

Holy Thursday

'T was on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk'd before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

O what a multitude they seem'd, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

By: William Blake

 

I Know That He Exists

I know that He exists.
Somewhere -- in Silence --
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play.
'Tis a fond Ambush --
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But -- should the play
Prove piercing earnest --
Should the glee -- glaze --
In Death's -- stiff -- stare --

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest --
Have crawled too far!

By: Emily Dickinson

 

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.

you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor ineating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

by: Kabir

 

Hare Krishna !

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.

you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor ineating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

by: Kabir
...................From SGB
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo





That is absolutely wonderful ! All glory to Sant Kabir ! Thank you.

 

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

From 'Auguries of Innocence' by William Blake

 

Here's one that means a lot to me from one of my favourite artists. Better to hear L.C.'s performance on the CD, but the lyrics, like most of his stuff, stand up as poetry I think.

Villanelle For Our Time.



From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.
We loved the easy and the smart,
But now, with keener hand and brain,
We rise to play a greater part.
The lesser loyalties depart,
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.
Not steering by the venal chart
That tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.
Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.



Leonard Cohen from the album ‘Dear Heather’.

 

Lotus - Feet

Pure unalloyed Lotus – Feet of Yours,
How can I wash You?
Do tell me today.
How can I sing Your Victory-Song
With a sweet, melodious voice?
I have no tune, no words,
No metre, no rhyme,
No flowers, no heart’s want.
I have only a quenchless inner urge.

By: Sri Chinmoy

 

My Swan, Let us Fly

My swan, let us fly to that land
Where your Beloved lives forever.

That land has an up-ended well
Whose mouth, narrow as a thread,
The married soul draws water from
Without a rope or pitcher.

My swan, let us fly to that land
Where your Beloved lives forever.

Clouds never cluster there,
Yet it goes on and on raining.
Don’t keep squatting outside in the yard –
Come in! Get drenched without a body!

My swan, let us fly to that land
Where your Beloved lives forever.

That land is always soaked in moonlight;
Darkness can never come near it.
It is flooded always with the dazzle
Of not one, but a million suns.

My swan, let us fly to that land
Where your Beloved lives forever.

- Kabir

 

He who binds himself to a joy

doth the winged life destroy.
But he who catches a joy as it flies
lives in Eternity's sunrise.

William Blake.

 

A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.

George Herbert (1593–1633)