Part Four Calcutta and Chandernagore 1907 ­ 1910     Satirical Poem Published in 1907     Reflections of Srinath Paul, Rai Bahadoor, on the Present Discontents   (The Address of a Perspiring Chairman Rendered Faithfully into the Ordinary English Vernacular.)   Councillors, friends, Rai Bahadoors and others, Gentlemen all, my bold and moderate brothers! This Conference's revolutionary course (By revolution, sirs, I mean of course The year's,  —  not anything wicked and Extremist;) Has brought us here, and like a skilful chemist Mixed well to

  The Meditations of Mandavya   I   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 over 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 lov

  Poems   Transformation   My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream; It fills my members with a might divine: I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine. Time is my drama or my pageant dream. Now are my illumined cells joy's flaming scheme And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine Channels of rapture opal and hyaline For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.   I am no more a vassal of the flesh, A slave to Nature and her leaden rule; I am caught no more in the senses' narrow mesh. My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight, My body is God's happy living tool, My

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Poems Written in 1910 and Published in 1920 ­ 1921     The Rákshasas   (The Rákshasa, the violent kinetic Ego, establishes his claim to mastery of the world replacing the animal Soul,  —  to be followed by controlled and intellectualised but unregenerated Ego, the Asura. Each such type and level of consciousness sees the Divine in its own image and its level in Nature is sustained by a differing form of the World-Mother.)   "Glory and greatness and the joy of life, Strength, pride, victorious force, whatever man Desires, whatever the wild beast enjoys, Bodie

  Sri Aurobindo in 1950 Part One   England and Baroda 1883 ­ 1898 Poem Published in 1883   Light   From the quickened womb of the primal gloom, The sun rolled, black and bare, Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop br

  Chitrangada     Chitrangada   In Manipur upon her orient hills Chitrangada beheld intending dawn Gaze coldly in. She understood the call. The silence and imperfect pallor passed Into her heart and in herself she grew Prescient of grey realities. Rising, She gazed afraid into the opening world. Then Urjoon felt his mighty clasp a void Empty of her he loved and, through the grey Unwilling darkness that disclosed her face, Sought out Chitrangada. "Why dost thou stand In the grey light, like one from joy cast down? O thou whose bliss is sure. Leave that grey space, Come hither." So she came

  Part Seven   Pondicherry Circa 1927 ­ 1947     Six Poems     The Bird of Fire   Gold-white wings a throb in the vastness, the bird of flame went glimmering over a sunfire curve to the haze of the west, Skimming, a messenger sail, the sapphire-summer waste of a soundless wayless burning sea. Now in the eve of the waning world the colour and splendour returning drift through a blue-flicker air back to my breast, Flame and shimmer staining the rapture-white foam-vest of the waters of Eternity.   Gold-white wings of the miraculous bird of fire, late and slow have you co

  Love and Death   Love and Death   In woodlands of the bright and early world, When love was to himself yet new and warm And stainless, played like morning with a flower Ruru with his young bride Priyumvada. Fresh-cheeked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom To love, to Ruru; Ruru, a happy flood Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled, Blinded with his soul's waves Priyumvada. To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower, To her all the world was filled with his embrace. Wet with new rains the morning earth, released From her fierce centuries and burning

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Poems Published in On Quantitative Metre     Ocean Oneness   Silence is round me, wideness ineffable; White birds on the ocean diving and wandering; A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven, Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.   Identified with silence and boundlessness My spirit widens clasping the universe Till all that seemed becomes the Real, One in a mighty and single vastness.   Someone broods there nameless and bodiless, Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite, And, sole in a still eternal rapture, Gathers all thing

  Ilion Bk-IV   Even as here upon earth I knew, in heaven as in Sparta; I on Elysian fields will enjoy thee as now in the Troad." Silent a moment she lingered like one who is lured by a music Rapturous, heard by himself alone and his lover in heaven, Then in her beauty compelling she rose up divine among women. "Yes, it is good," she cried, "what the gods do and actions of mortals; Good is this play of the world; it is good, the joy and the torture. Praised be the hour of the gods when I wedded bright Menelaus! Praised, more praised the keels that severed the seas towards Helen Ch