From Songs of the Soul, “Paupack’s Peak” demonstrates the power and grace with which the great poet and spiritual leader Paramahansa Yogananda has imbued his poems/epistles to the Divine Creator.
First Stanza: “O Paupack’s Peak”
Addressing the peak, the speaker declares that after becoming aware of this majestic place, he sought its “Hidden Beauty” as well as its outward physical beauty.
The speaker, as an accomplished mystic, takes his listeners/readers to the soul depths of spiritual realization that he expertly mines from the natural beauty of forest and peak, lake and leaf, shade and sun. Finding beauty without, he is able to hie within to soul awareness where individual meets Divine Origin.
Second Stanza: “Thy palace I approached by woodsy road”
As the speaker continues to address the peak, it becomes evident that he is addressing God as well. Fully cognizant that everything is endowed with the essences of its Maker, the speaker conveys his understanding in every utterance: “Thy palace I approached by woodsy road; / Where on both sides there stood / Thy columned trees.”
The reverence with which he addresses the peak’s forest reflects the reverence he holds in his heart for the Divine Creator. The trees resemble “leafy swords outstretched / To render bowered welcome.” God is welcoming a devotee, as the forest is welcoming a nature lover.
Third Stanza: “Unconscious hopes did thrill”
The beauty arouses in the speaker the motivation to unveil further secrets of the peak’s beauty. He anticipates the glories he will find, as he proclaims, “tempted was I / Thy secrets to pry.”
Fourth Stanza: “I stole through secret hilly ways”
The speaker intimates that he is propelled rapidly “through secret hilly ways” to places that strike him as marvelous in their luscious beauty and exotic in their grace. He finds himself standing “face to face” with “beauteous scene / Where liquid silver spray” adorns the “breast of caves.”
The water cascading down the faces of the caves goes “sparkling through rays of sun,” “ornament[ing] crude stones and logs,” encircling them with “eddying necklaces” and “pearly bubbled wreaths.”
Fifth Stanza: “I tore through veil of trees”
Roused by astounding beauty, the speaker “tore through veil of trees” and suddenly gazes upon “Thy peaceful Paupack.” At this point, he also encounters a lake, which he describes as “tears close-gathered” which resemble a “mirror still.” This sight quenches his spiritual thirst as clear, cool water would quench the palate.
Sixth Stanza: “Cool breezes wooed the warm lake waters”
Into the speaker’s sight, “gliding like peaceful swans / At farewell hour of the sun,” appear two canoes. Out of the “snow-white mist,” they seem to resemble “mystic barks” carrying “singing angels / Sailing across the sky.” In the speaker’s mind’s eye, the lake and the canoers transcend to the heavens on wings of sheer joy and expectation.
Seventh Stanza: “I entered once a covered path”
The speaker then continues his hike, taking up a pathway where “velvet moss / And sunshine-checkered leafy cushion” offer a “silken form” that the tree leaves have furnished “for all to tread.”
The speaker then interjects a rhetorical question: Could even the richest man afford such luxury as the gracious Lord has offered here? Of course, no man could ever create “such bowered garland, never fading, for a lake” or these “countless rhododendrons, white and pink, / Whose flowers are each summer born / The woodland darkness to adorn.”
Eighth Stanza: “I passed through corridors of trees”
The speaker then passes through another clump of trees, walking “a garland path,” finding his footsteps had become noisy. So he commands his feet to be still, while “in sweetest reverence” he bows “to the Spirit in this temple of silence.”
Ninth Stanza: “As motionless I stood, and gazed within”
As the speaker stands engrossed in prayer, his natural meditative state takes him deep within where his soul communes personally and peacefully with the Divine Reality that is “within, without.” He intuits that “leaves and stones, my body, sky and earth and light” are all one in the One. And “Where’re I looked, whate’er I saw, / Thy tender Peeping Eye / My soul did draw.”
As beautiful and pleasurable as the physical body of nature is, the Creator of all this beauty mightily exceeds that beauty, when the devotee contacts that Creator within the depths of his own soul.
Source
- Paramahansa Yogananda, “Paupack’s Peak,” Songs of the Soul, Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, 1983.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
