30 The Future Poetry
beauty, beauty of image, beauty of thought, beauty of emotion,
the deeper intention of the spirit within, so that we have still
to look for that beyond the image rather than are seized by it
through the image. A high pleasure is there, not unspiritual in
its nature, but still it is not that point where pleasure passes into
or is rather drowned in the pure spiritual Ananda, the ecstasy of
the creative, poetic revelation.
That intensity comes where everything else may be present,
but all is powerfully carried on the surge of a spiritual vision
which has found its inspired and inevitable speech. All or any of
the other elements may be there, but they are at once subordi-
nated and transfigured to their highest capacity for poetic light
and rapture. This intensity belongs to no particular style, de-
pends on no conceivable formula of diction. It may be the height
of the decorative imaged style as often we find it in Kalidasa or
Shakespeare; it may be that height of bare and direct expression
where language seems to be used as a scarcely felt vaulting-
board for a leap into the infinite; it may be the packed intensity
of language which uses either the bare or the imaged form at
will, but fills every word with its utmost possible rhythmic and
thought suggestion. But in itself it depends on none of these
things; it is not a style, but poetic style itself, the Word; it creates
andcarrieswithititselementsratherthaniscreatedbythem.
Whatever its outward forms, it is always the one fit style for the
Mantra.