NIRVANA

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

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

And our accursed souls at last shall rest.