TWO SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE On the occasion of the 400th birth anniversary of Shakespeare, I present to you today two of the great Shakespearean sonnets. The sonnets, as you know, are all about love. They are however characterised by an incredible intensity and perhaps an equally incredible complexity, for the Shakespearean feeling is of that category. Shakespeare has treated love in a novel way; he has given a new figure to that common familiar sentiment. And incidentally he has given a new sense and bearing to Death. From a human carnal base there is a struggle, an effort here to rise into something extracorporeal; that is, something outside a

RABINDRANATH AND SRI AUROBINDO "Tagore has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way." Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the thirties and their full significance can be grasped only when it is understood that the two master-souls were at one in the central purpose of their lives. Also there is a further bond of natural affinity between them centring round the fact that both were poets, in a deeper sense, seer poets—Rabindranath the Poet of the Dawn, Sri Aurobindo the Poet and Prophet of the Eternal Day, a new Dawn and Day for the human race. And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their Motherland and that was w

A VEDIC STORY (RlGVEDA - X. 51.) The gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni? How is it that the comrade has disappeared all on a sudden? The Sacrifice—the great work has to be undertaken. And he is to be the leader, for he alone can take up the burden. There is no time to be lost, everything is ready for the ceremony to start and just at the moment the one needed most is nowhere. So the gods organise a search party to find out the Whereabouts of the runaway god. The search party consists of Varuna, Mitra and Yama. We shall presently understand the sense of the selection. They look about here and there—in ten directions, it is mentioned—and at last

GEORGE SEFERIS Poet and essayist in modem Greek. Translated poems of the English poet, George Eliot, into modern Greek; was in diplomatic service, now retired and settled in Athens. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1963. An Elder, maître, now in the literary world of modem Greece. References: "Poetry" (Chicago); Greek Number, June 1951; "Poetry", Greek Number, October 1964; '"Poems" translated by Rex Warner (the Bodley Head. London) Seferis is a poet of sighs. I do not know the cadence, the breath of the original Greek rhythm. But if something of that tone and temper has been carried over into English, what can be more like a heave of sign t

ROBERT GRAVES Robert Graves is not a major poet, and certainly not a great poet. He is a minor poet. But in spite of his minor rank he is a good poet: here he presents us a jewel, a beautiful poem both in form and substance. He has indeed succeeded, as we shall see, in removing the veil, the mystic golden lid, partially at least and revealed to our mortal vision a glimpse of light and beauty and truth, made them delightfully sink into and seep through our aesthetic sense. Like the poet his idol also is of a lower rank or of a plebeian status. He keeps away from such high gods as Indra and Agni and Varuna and Mitra: great poets will sing their praises. He wi

INDEX A Agni 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 31, 72 Aldous Huxley 33 Antigone 40 Aphrodite 34 Apollo 34 Aristotelian 49 Arnold 43 Arya 90, 92 Ashram 92 Asuras 5 Athens 47 Atri 8 Atul Gupta 102 Auchathya 8 Avatara 27 B Bacchus 34 Balaka 92 Bamardo 23, 24 Baudelaire 72 Bauls 84 Beethoven 9 Bengal 91, 104 Bengalis 98 Bengal mysticism 88 Bengali Poetry 82 Bhakta 78 Boris Pasternak 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45 Brahman 12 Brihat 4 British 98 Brummagem 98 Buddhist Period 82 C Caryatides 35 Chandid