[BNP/E3, 78 – 27-28]

Delirium.

Nirvâna.

A non-existence deeply within Being,

A sentient nothingness ethereal,

A more than real Ideality, agreeing

Of subject and of object, all in all.

Nor Life, nor Death, nor sense nor senselessness,

But a deep feeling of not feeling aught;

A calm how deep! ‑ much deeper than distress,

Haply as thinking is without the thought.

Beauty and ugliness, and love and hate,

Virtue and vice ‑ all these nowise will be;

That peace all quiet shall eliminate

Our everlasting life‑uncertainty.

A quietness of all our human hopes,

An end as of a feverish, tired breath...

For fit expressions vainly the soul gropes;

It is beyond the logic of our faith.

An opposite of joy's stir, of the deep

[28^r]

Nirvâna – 2.

Disconsolation that our life doth give,

A waking to the slumber that we sleep,

A sleeping to the living that we live.

All difference unto the life we have,

All other to the thoughts that through us roam;

It is a home if our life be a grave,

It is a grave if our life be a home.

All that we weep, all to which we aspire

Is there, and like an infant on the breast,

We shall e'er be with more than we desire[1]

And our accursèd souls at last shall rest.

Alexander Search.

1906.

[1] We shall e'er be with more than we desire ^{/transcend the little we desire\ /the plans of our desire\ /the cripple we desire\}