NOCTURNE

My words would bring through atmospheres of calm

The new moon's smile that breathes unto the heart

Secrets of love lost in clay-captured kisses;

The evening star like some great bird whose fury

Dies to a cold miraculous sudden pause—

Wings buoyed by sheer forgetfulness of earth;

And oh that dream-nostalgia in the air,

The sky-remembrance of dew-perfumed dust!

I would disclose the one ethereal beauty

Calling across lone fires and fragrances—

But vain were music, vain all light of rapture

That drew not sense a pathway to strange sleep

Nor woke a passion billowing through the body

In search of realms no eye-boats ever reached.

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"Very fine indeed. This time you have got the blank verse all right, owing to the weight and power you have been able to put into the movement as well as the thought and language. Nothing to criticise. The lines give a quite coherent development and there is a single aspiration throughout. It has almost the full sonnet effect in spite of the absence of the rhyme structure."

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