I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
I have discovered my deep deathless being: Masked by my front of mind, immense, serene It meets the world with an Immortal's seeing, A god-spectator of the human scene.
No pain and sorrow of the heart and flesh Can tread that pure and voiceless sanctuary. Danger and fear, Fate's hounds, slipping their leash Rend body and nerve,—the timeless Spirit is free.
Awake, God's ray and witness in my breast, In the undying substance of my soul Flamelike, inscrutable the almighty Guest. Death nearer comes and Destiny takes her toll;
He hears the blows that shatter Nature's house: Calm sits he, formidable, luminous.
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