'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Part Five Pondicherry Circa 1910 ­ 1920     Two Poems in Quantitative Hexameters     Ilion   BOOK I   The Book of the Herald   Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals, Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending, Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine. Earth in the dawn-fire delivered from starry and shadowy vastness Woke to the wonder of life and its passion and sorrow and beauty,

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Urvasi   CANTO II   But from the dawn and mountains Urvasie Went marvelling and glad, not as of old A careless beam; for an august constraint, Unfelt before, ruled her extravagant grace And wayward beauty; and familiar things Grew strange to her, and to her eyes came mists Of mortal vision. Love was with her there, But not of Paradise nor that great guest Perpetual who makes his golden couch Between the Opsara's ever-heaving breasts. For this was rapturous, troubled, self-absorbed, A gracious human presence which she loved, And wondered at,

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50     Sonnets from Manuscripts Circa 1900 ­ 1901     O face that I have loved   O face that I have loved until no face Beneath the quiet heavens such glory wear, They say you are not beautiful,  —  no snare Of twilight in the changing mysticness Or deep enhaloed secrecy of hair, Soft largeness in the eyes I dare not kiss! Unreal all your bosom's dreadful bliss. Too narrow are your brows they say to bear The temple of vast beauty in its span Or chaste cold bosom to house fierily Beauty that maddens all the heart of man. I know not; this I kn

  Sonnets     Three Sonnets   Man the Enigma   A deep enigma is the soul of man. His conscious life obeys the Inconscient's rule, His need of joy is learned in sorrow's school, His heart is a chaos and an empyrean. His subtle Ignorance borrows Wisdom's plan; His mind is the Infinite's sharp and narrow tool. He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful, And does what Matter must or Spirit can.   All powers in his living's soil take root And claim from him their place and struggling right: His ignorant creature mind crawling towards light Is Nature's fool and Godhead's candidate,

  BOOK II   The Book of the Statesman   Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid. Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals. All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens. Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens, Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures, Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last time Yearns to the beauty desired that again sha

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1927 ­ 1947     Thou art myself   Thou art myself born from myself, O child. O thou who speakst art thou my greater self? And knowst my destiny and why I came Into the narrow limits of this form?     Vain, they have said   Vain, they have said, is the anguish of man and his labour diurnal, Vainly his caravans cross through the desert of Time to the Eternal. Thick and persistent the night confronts all his luminous longings; Dire death's sickle mows like a harvest his hosts and his throngings. Ev

  BOOK V   The Book of Achilles   Meanwhile grey from the Trojan gates Talthybius journeyed Spurred by the secret thought of the Fates who change not nor falter. Simois sighed round his wheels and Xanthus roared at his passing, Troas' god like a lion wroth and afraid; to meet him Whistling the ocean breezes came and Ida regarded. So with his haste in the wheels the herald oceanward driving Came through the gold of the morn, o'er the trampled green of the pastures Back to the ships and the roar of the sea and the iron-hooped leaguer. Wide to the left his circle he wrote where the tents of Achilles Troop

  The Body   This body which was once my universe, Is now a pittance carried by the soul,  — Its Titan's motion bears this scanty purse, Pacing through vastness to a vaster goal.   Too small was it to meet the giant need That only infinitude can satisfy: He keeps it still, for in the folds is hid His secret passport to eternity.   In his front an endless Time and Space deploy The landscape of their golden happenings; His heart is filled with sweet and violent joy, His mind is upon great and distant things.   How grown with all the world conterminous Is the little dwelle

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Short Poems Published in 1909 and 1910     The Mother of Dreams   Goddess, supreme Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest, Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting? Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them; Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens; There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravi

  Ilion Bk-VIII   Drawn to the anguish of men and the fierce terrestrial labour. Down he dropped with a roar of light invading the regions, And in his fierce and burning spirit intense and uplifted Sure of his luminous truth and careless for weakness of mortals Flaming oppressed the earth with his dire intolerant beauty. Over the summits descending that slept in the silence of heaven, He through the spaces angrily drew towards the tramp and the shouting Over the speeding of Xanthus and over the pastures of Troya. Clang of his argent bow was the wrath restrained of the mighty, Stern was his pace like