A Realm of Wonder

Far off there is a realm of wonder,—Know you its name?No region the wide heavens underCould be the same!Dark orange groves it hath, and alleysWith sunlit verdure covered over,High-mounting hills, great river valleysEnriched by crops of maize and clover:A Land apart, from all asunder,—Know you its name?

Walls hath it—two. One—of the mind,To the outside world forever blind,Itself within itself hath still confined;Wherefore its brooding and exclusive spiritCraves but for progress in experience sown,Noiseless as Nature's own;And with that reverence it doth inherit,Hearkens obediently its sages,Mysteriously wise from distant ages,And with unconscious, tireless sacrificeCreates a paradise.

A paradise you say,Stretching away—and endlessly away!—A garden—lovelily abloomWith rice and silk and tea,Cotton and yam and wheat, all fair to see,And breathing forth an exquisite perfumeOf mingled mulberry and orange-blows,Azalea and rose:A garden, yet a tombWhere myriads, sleeping, are remembered stillBy myriads more, who glad their precepts keep,And honour them in sleep.

What centuries of industry speak here!What irrigating waters, silver-clear,Skirting the uplands, rise, tier above tier!What thronged canals, through the Delta plain extendingHundreds of miles!What junks, what bankside villages unending,What cottages with brown and green roof-tiles!What fanes! what wildwood temples without cease!What unperturbed tranquility! what peace!

Far off there is a realm of wonder,—Know you its name?No region the wide heavens underCould be the same!—So calm, productive, full of beauty;Unto contentment so inviting!A Land, through service and through duty,The past and future so unitingThat Death itself may not them sunder!—Know you its name?

Back of the centuries its birth-hour lonelyMen vainly seek:Of its beginnings legend onlyAnd myth may speak:Ere Greece of beauty dreamed, or Rome of power,In some mysterious, unrecorded hour,Darkling from hushed obscurity it sprungWhen the Nile gods and the Vedas yet were young.