Kinchinjunga

O WHITE Priest of Eternity, around

Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise

Of the earth’s immemorial sacrifice

To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies;

O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows,

First-born of Asia whose maternal throes

Seem changed now to a million human woes,

Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound

One sigh of all the mystery in thee found.

For in this world too much is overclear,

Immortal Ministrant to many lands,

From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands

Rivers that each libation poured expands.

Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire!

Thy people fathom life and find it dire,

Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire

To live again, though in Illusion’s sphere,

Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear.

III

Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites,

Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls

In strange austerity, whose trance appalls,

Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls.

Continue still thy silence high and sure,

That something beyond fleeting may endure—

Something that shall forevermore allure

Imagination on to mystic flights

Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights.

Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes

Of lifted granite round with reachless snows.

Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows

Of all the nations envy thy repose.

Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled.

Be that alone on earth which has not failed.

Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed,

But since primeval Power upreared thy heights

Has stood above all deaths and all delights.

And though thy loftier Brother shall be King,

High-priest art thou to Brahma unrevealed,

While thy white sanctity forever sealed

In icy silence leaves desire congealed.

In ghostly ministrations to the sun,

And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun,

Be holy still, till East to West has run,

And till no sacrificial suffering

On any shrine is left to tell life’s sting.