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Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Savitri_Volume-29/Book 7 Canto 01 The Joy of Union.htm
Book SevenThe Book of Yoga
Canto One
The Joy of Union;
The Ordeal of the
Foreknowledge of Death and the
Heart's Grief
Fate followed her foreseen immutable road.
Man's hopes and longings build the journeying wheels
That bear the body of his destiny
And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal.
His fate within him shapes his acts and rules;
Its face and form already are born in him,
Its parentage is in
his secret soul;
Here Matter seems to mould the body's life
And the soul follows
where its nature drives:
Nature and Fate compel his free-will's choice.
But greater spirits this balance can reverse
And ma
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Savitri_Volume-29/Letters on Savitri.htm
Letters on
“Savitri”
1
There is a previous draft, the result of the many retouchings
of which somebody told you; but in that form it would not have been a "magnum
opus" at all. Besides, it would have been a legend and not a symbol. I
therefore started recasting the whole thing; only the best passages and lines of
the old draft will remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame.
No, I do not work at the poem once a week; I have other
things to do. Once a month perhaps, I look at the new form of the first book and
make such changes as inspiration points out to me — so that nothing shall fall
below the minimum height which I have fixed for it.
—1931
Envoi
Ite hillc, Camenae, vos quoque ite jam, sane
Dulces
Camenae, nam fatebimur verum
Dulces fuistis, et tamen meas chartas
Revisitote sed pudenter et raro.
Pale
poems, weak and few, who vainly use
Your wings towards the unattainable spheres,
Offspring
of the divine Hellenic Muse,
Poor
maimèd children born of six disastrous years!
Not as your mother’s is your wounded grace,
Since
not to me with equal love returned
The
hope which drew me to that serene face
Wherein
no unreposeful light of effort burned.
Depart and live for seasons many or few
If live you may, but stay not here to pain
My heart with hopeless passion and
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Collected Poems_Volume-05/The Meditations of Mandavya.htm
The
Meditations of Mandavya
ONE
O
joy of gaining all the soul’s desire!
O
stranger joy of the defeat and loss!
O
heart that yearnest to uplift the world!
O
fiercer heart that bendest o’er its pain
And
drinkst the savour! I will love thee, O Love,
Naked
or veiled or dreadfully disguised;
Not
only when thou flatterest my heart
But
when thou tearst it! Thy sweet pity I love
And
mother’s care for creatures, for the joys
I
love thee that the lives of things possess,
And
love thee for the torment of our pains;
Nor
cry, as some, against thy will, nor say,
Thou
art not. Easy is the love that lasts
Only
-61_“I”.htm
“I”
This
strutting “I” of human self and pride
Is a puppet built by Nature for her use,
And
dances as her strong compulsions bid,
Forcefully feeble, brilliantly obtuse.
Our
thinking is her leap of fluttering mind,
We hear and see by her constructed sense;
Our
force is hers; her colours have combined
Our fly-upon-the-wheel magnificence.
He
sits within who turns on her machine
These beings, portions of his mystery,
Many
dwarf beams of his great calm sunshine,
A reflex of his sole infinity.
One
mighty Self of cosmic act and thought
Employs
this figure of a unit nought.
Omnipresence
He
is in me,
NOTES
THE BIRD OF FIRE AND TRANCE
These two poems are in the nature of metrical experiments. The first is a kind
of compromise between the stress system and the foot measure. The stanza is of four
lines, alternately of twelve and ten stresses. The second and fourth line in
each stanza can be read as a ten-foot line of mixed iambs and anapaests, the first and third, though a similar system
subject to replacement of a foot anywhere by a single-syllable half-foot could
be applied, are still mainly readable by stresses.
The other poem is an experiment in the use of quantitative foot measures. It is
a four-line stanza reading alternately
˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘
¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ ¯ |
¯ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯ ¯
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Collected Poems_Volume-05/Hic Jecet.htm
Hic Jacet
GLASNEVIN
CEMETERY
Patriots,
behold your guerdon. This man found
Erin,
his mother, bleeding, chastised, bound,
Naked to imputation, poor, denied,
While alien masters held her house of pride.
And now behold her! Terrible and fair
With the eternal ivy in her hair,
Armed with the clamorous
thunder, how she stands
Like
Pallas’ self, the Gorgon in her hands.
True that her puissance will be easily past,
The vision ended; she herself has cast
Her fate behind her: yet the work not vain
Since that which once has been may be again,
And
she this image yet recover, fired
With godlike workings, brain and hands inspired,
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Collected Poems_Volume-05/Metrical Experiments.htm
VII
METRICAL EXPERIMENTS
Winged
with dangerous deity,
Passion swift and implacable
Arose and, storm-footed
In the dim heart of him,
Ran, insatiate, conquering,
Worlds devouring and hearts of men,
Then perished, broken by
The irresistible
Occult
masters of destiny,-
They who sit in the secrecy
And watch unmoved ever
Unto the end of all.
Metrical Scheme:
¯
˘
|
¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ ˘ |
¯
˘
|
¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ ˘ |
˘ ¯
|
˘ ¯
|
˘ ˘ |
˘ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ ˘ |
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Collected Poems_Volume-05/Urvasie.htm
Urvasie
CANTO
I
Pururavus
from Titan conflict ceased
Turned
worldwards, through illimitable space
Had
travelled like a star ’twixt earth and heaven
Slowly
and brightly. Late our mortal air
He
breathed; for downward now the hooves divine
Trampling
out fire with sound before them went,
And
the great earth rushed up towards him, green.
With
the first line of dawn he touched the peaks,
Nor
paused upon those savage heights, but reached
Inferior
summits subject to the rain,
And
rested. Looking northwards thence he saw
The
giant snows upclimbing to the sky,
And
felt the mighty silence. In his ear
The
noise of a retreating bat
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/Collected Poems_Volume-05/Khaled of The Sea.htm
KHALED OF THE SEA
An
Arabic Romance
An early work, conceived in twelve cantos with a
Prologue and Epilogue, found unrevised and incomplete.
Prologue
Alnuman and the Peri
Canto 1
The
Story of Alnuman and the Emir
Canto 2
The
Companions of Alnuman 1
Canto 3
The
Companions of Alnuman 2
Canto 4
The
Companions of Alnuman 3
Canto 5
The
First Quest of the Sapphire Crown
Canto 6
The
Quest of the- Golden Snake
Canto
7
The
Quest of the Marble Queen
Canto 8
The
Quest of the Snowbird
Canto 9
The
Second Quest of the Sapphire Crown
Canto 10
The
Journey of the Green Oasis