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

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Sonnets from Manuscripts Circa 1934 ­ 1947     Man the Thinking Animal   A trifling unit in a boundless plan Amidst the enormous insignificance Of the unpeopled cosmos' fire-whirl dance, Earth, as by accident, engendered man,   A creature of his own grey ignorance, A mind half shadow and half gleam, a breath That wrestles, captive in a world of death, To live some lame brief years. Yet his advance,   Attempt of a divinity within, A consciousness in the inconscient Night, To realise its own supernal Light, Confron

  Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1891 ­ 1892     Thou bright choregus   Thou bright choregus of the heavenly dance Who with thy lively beauty wouldst endear The alien stars and turnst thy paler glance To us thy dominating sphere   Why didst thou with Erinna impart thy mind, The faithful copyist of this cruelty, Who to usurpers pays allegiance kind Passing the true pretender by?   Like a white statue   Like a white statue made of lilies Her eyes were hidden jewels beneath scabbards of black silk: her shoulders moonlit mou

  The Infinite Adventure   On the waters of a nameless Infinite My skiff is launched; I have left the human shore. All fades behind me and I see before The unknown abyss and one pale pointing light. An unseen Hand controls my rudder. Night Walls up the sea in a black corridor,  — An inconscient Hunger's lion plaint and roar Or the ocean sleep of a dead Eremite.   I feel the greatness of the Power I seek Surround me; below me are its giant deeps, Beyond, the invisible height no soul has trod. I shall be merged in the Lonely and Unique And wake into a sudden blaze of God, The

  Lyrical Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1934 ­ 1947     Symbol Moon   Once again thou hast climbed, O moon, like a white fire on the glimmering edge, Floating up, floating up from the haunted verge of a foam-tremulous sea. Mystic-horned here crossing the grey-hued listless nights and days, Spirit-silver craft from the ports of eternity.   Overhead with thy plunging and swaying prow thou fleetest, O ship of the gods, Glorifying the clouds with thy halo, but our hearts with a rose-red rapture shed from the secret breasts of love; Almost thou seemest the very bliss

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1912 ­ 1920     Thou who controllest   Thou who controllest the wide-spuming Ocean and settest its paces, Hear me, thou strong and resistless Poseidon, lord of the waters. Dancing thy waves in their revel Titanic, tossing my vessel One to another, laugh from their raucous throats of derision, Dropping it deep in their troughs till it buries its prow in the welter. Comrades dear as the drops of my heart have been left when it rises, Left in thy salt and lonely seas, and the scream of the tempest Chides me that still I

  Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1900 ­ 1906     To the Boers   (Written during the progress of the Boer War.)   O Boers, you have dared much and much endured For freedom, your strong simple hearts inured To danger and privation nor so made As by death's daily grasp to be dismayed, Nor numbers nor disasters in the field, Nor to o'erwhelming multitudes to yield. It was no secondary power you faced, But she who has the whole wide world embraced, England whose name is as the thunder, she Whose navies are the despots of the sea, Napoleon's conqueror whose fair dreadful face

Collected Poems Publisher's Note   Collected Poems comprises all of Sri Aurobindo's poetical works with the exception of (1) the epic Savitri, (2) poetic dramas, (3) most translations into verse of poetry in Sanskrit, Bengali and other languages, and (4) original poetry in Bengali and Sanskrit. Savitri is published as volumes 33 and 34 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO; the poetic dramas are included in volumes 3 and 4, Collected Plays and Stories; the poetic translations are included in volume 5, Translations; and the original poetry in