Religion

Indian Meditation

by Arthur Symons 1865–1945

From The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917)

Religion

Where shall this self at last find happiness?
O Soul, only in nothingness.
Does not the Earth suffice to its own needs?
And what am I but one of the Earth's weeds?
All things have been and all things shall go on
Before me and when I am gone;
This self that cries out for eternity
Is what shall pass in me:
The tree remains, the leaf falls from the tree.

I would be as the leaf, I would be lost
In the identity and death of frost,
Rather than draw the sap of the tree's strength
And for the tree's sake be cast off at length.
To be is homage unto being; cease
To be, and be at peace,
If it be peace for self to have forgot
Even that it is not.

MLA

Symons, Arthur. “Indian Meditation.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/symons/7/.

Chicago

Symons, Arthur. “Indian Meditation.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/symons/7/.

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