Conquest of Nature

‘Here’s one with a bleeding heart’, rang abroad Love’s joyous cry. Beauty trembled and said, ‘Look! Here’s one with a seeing eye.’

Nature was surprised to see from its passive dust appear, all of a sudden, one who was of himself maker. breaker, seer.

Whispers traveled all the way from Eden to Night’s dark abode: ‘Look out, veiled ones; here comes one who will tear up every shroud.’

Not yet self-aware, desire lay curled up in Being’s lap. Opening its eyes, it saw before it a new world unwrap.

Life exclaimed, ‘O happy day! I writhed in dust aeon after aeon. Now has opened at long last a door out of this ancient prison.’

I am no creature of mere light that I should bow to man. He is a base-born thing of dust, and I am of fire born.

The blood in the veins of the world is lit up by my flame. The tearing speed of wind is mine, and mine is thunder’s boom.

I forge the atoms’ harmony, the elements’ concourse. I burn, but also shape: I am the fire that makes the glass.

The things I make I break to bits and scatter in the dust, in order to create new forms from fragments of those lost.

This restlessly revolving sky is a wave of my sea; and in my throbbing substance dwells the shape of things to be.

The stars’ bodies were made by You; I am their motive force. I am the substances of the world. I am life’s primal source.

The body draws its soul from you. But I arouse the soul. While You waylay with blissful peace, I lead with action’s call.

I never begged obedience of slaves who always pray. I rule without a hell: I judge without a Judgement Day.

That low-born creature of earth, man, of mean intelligence, though born in Your lap, will grow old under my vigilance.

A life of struggle, strain and stress is better than eternal rest. When a dove strains hard at its net, an eagle’s heart beats in its breast.

O you are fit for nothing but abject obeisance like a slave. Like a tall cypress stand erect, O you who do not act but crave.

These streams of milk and honey have deprived you of the strength to act. Come take a hearty draught of wine from the cup of the vine direct.

Good and evil, virtue and sin, are myths created by your Lord. Come taste the joy of action and go forth to seek your due reward.

Arise, for I will show to you the prospect of a whole new world. Unveil your eyes and look around; go forth and see it all unfurled.

You are a tiny, worthless drop; become a shining, priceless pearl. Descend from Eden’s halcyon heights and plunge into the life-stream’s swirl.

You are a brightly shining sword go dip into Creation’s heart. To prove your mettle issue forth and from your scabbard’s bosom part.

Unfold your eagle-wings and soar and shed the blood of timid quails. O for an eagle it is death to live within its eyrie’ walls.

You have not learnt this lesson yet; fulfilment dooms desire to death. You know what is eternal life? To burn anew with each new breath.

O what a joy it is to make one’s life a constant, ardent glow! And with one’s breath make desert, hill and plain like molten metal flow!

Open a door out of one’s cage onto the garden’s vast expanse! Roam in the spaces of the sky, and tell the stars one’s weal and woe.

With secret yearnings, open prayers, cast looks on Beauty’s seraglio!

At times to see a single flower in the riot of a whole field, at other times tell hurtful thorns from roses that in their midst blow!

I burn in a slow-burning fire; I am an agonised desire. I give up faith for living doubt; I seek, I question, I aspire.

O You, who are the sun from whom the satellite of soul draws light, you have made of my heart a lamp that keeps Your whole Creation bright.

I took Your ocean and poured it into canals made by my art. My pickaxe rought forth streams of milk and honey from the mountain’s heart.

The Moon is my devoted slave, and Venus is my worshipper. My enterprising intellect has made me Nature’s conqueror.

I delved into the depths of earth, and I soared the heights of the sky, the mighty sun and tiny motes are all thralls of my sorcery.

I was deflected from the path of virtue by the Devil’s fraud. Forgive my error and accept my humble penitence, O God:

One cannot subjugate the world unless one yields to its allure; for Beauty’s wild pride is not tamed until it falls into Love’s snare.

In order to melt the heart of this stone god with a fervid sigh, I had to wear his sacred thread as proof of my idolatry.

Though Nature is ingenious, yet to intellect it falls a prey, and Ahriman, the fireborn god, kneels down and worships mortal clay.