NO MORTAL BREATH No mortal breath you bring us: love divine Makes your whole countenance a silver call To meet an unviewed vast of spirit-hush. Far in the mystic vault your home is hung: We turn our faces to your planet soul And all infinity weighs upon our eye Page-98 Its plumbless sleep. O light unwithering, O star-bloom mirrored in a lake of earth, Remember that your roots suck the pure sky! Dream not the brief and narrow curves of clay Limit your destiny of pristine power— A throne amid ecstatic thrones that rule A loneliness of superhuman night. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine all

SPHERE-MUSIC Bring not your stars the very same Magic as mine? I give that name Unto a touch of cool far flame Upon my heart When evening yearns beyond the brief Monotonies of joy and grief For some strange rhythmical relief Shining apart— And dim migrations, mindward sent From reveries omnipotent Through shadows of a firmament Crowned by deep lull, Scatter their white and winged powers Of song across the barren hours Till darkness lit to flying flowers Breathes beautiful. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is a very good lyric, the rhythm and the thought very subtle and satisfying." (I

TWO BIRDS A small bird crimson-hued Among great realms of green Fed on their multitudinous fruit— But in his dark eye flamed more keen A hunger as from joy to joy He moved the poignance of his beak, And ever in his heart he wailed, "Where hangs the marvellous fruit I seek?" Then suddenly above his head A searching gaze of grief he turned: Lo, there upon the topmost bough A pride of golden plumage burned! Lost in a dream no hunger broke, This calm bird—aureoled, immense— Sat motionless: all fruit he found Within his own magnificence. The watchful ravener below Felt his time-tortured passion ceas

THE SANNYASI (An old story relates how a princess over-proud of her beauty would not accept any lover unless he could first live like a Sannyasi in the Himalayas, practising austerities to purify himself in order to win her favour as of a divinity. One youth, famous for his handsomeness as well as heroic deeds, took up the difficult wager and at the end of the stipulated three years returned to the eagerly waiting princess, but he came now no longer in the mood of a suitor....) If every look I turn tramples your flesh Forgive the pilgrim passion of a dream That presses over the narrow path of limbs To an azure height beaconing above the mind.

ORISON A godless temple is the dome of space: Reveal the sun of thy love-splendoured face, O lustrous flowering of invisible peace, 3 O glory breaking into curves of clay 4 From mute intangible dream-distances, 5 That like a wondrous yet familiar light Eternity may mingle with our day! Leave thou no quiver of this time-born heart A poor and visionless wanderer apart: Make even my darkness a divine repose 10 One with thy nameless root, O mystic rose— 11 The slumbering seasons of my mortal sight 12 A portion of the unknowable vast behind 13 Thy gold apocalypse of shadowless mind! 14 Sri Aur

-002_Publishers^Note.htm PUBLISHERS' NOTE The Publishers acknowledge their indebtedness to the Editors of The Bombay Chronicle Weekly, The All India Weekly and The Advent in whose pages the essays included in this volume have already appeared—mostly .in a shorter form.

ART-PRINCIPLES FOR INDIA The Marxist Attitude in the Balance There was recently a burst of tanks and bombers in newspaper columns against an art-critic who ventured to challenge Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's pronouncement some months ago on the essence and aim of art. and aim of art. I do not deny that the said artcritic's statement was lacking in clearness and completeness. Bur was he absolutely off the right line? Was the core of his contention really open to fatal attack? To understand that core we must look clearly at Nehru's own thought. Nehru seems to have had five principles in mind. First, art should not be cut off from life. Second, it

WAS THIS THE ENLIGHTENED ONE? Modern Misconceptions about Buddha The other day I came across an article on Buddha by an Indian writer. I took it up with keen interest, wondering how it would expound Buddha's Nirvana in lucid journalese. It made a good story, but to my disappointment I found that the author got over the Gordian knot of Nirvana by pretending there was no knot at all. To be a countryman of the great Gautama and yet to quote H.G.Wells on Buddhism—this was beyond belief. How could H.G.Wells probe into the soul of a man who would have regarded the seer of the outer shape of things-to-come as totally ignorant of the inner shape o

CAN INDIANS WRITE ENGLISH POETRY? The Indian Mind and the English Language W. B. YEATS is said to have " pooh-poohed" the idea that an Indian could write English poetry of a high order. It is indeed true that the subtle inwardness one feels towards one's mother-tongue is likely to be missing .when an Indian attempts to express himself in English. But is it impossible to have it? And is it advisable always for us to fall back upon our vernaculars and leave English to Irishmen like Yeats? Reading most of the verse turned out by English-speaking Indians we are almost persuaded that we shall never succeed in reaching a high standard. But h

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JAWAHARLAL NEHRU A Vision of his "Actual" and his "Potential" PANDIT Jawaharlal Nehru rode on horseback to meet the Cabinet Mission. He had gone in the same way to confer with Lord Wavell a year or so earlier. Gandhi came in a rickshaw; so too did Maulana Abu! Kalam Azad. But Nehru was astride a dappled horse. When I saw him thus in the Indian News Parade I was struck with the significance of the act. Here was something princely—an old-world nobility made its appearance. Here also was something warriorlike—an adventurous spirit fared forth. Here, again, was something romantic—a dreamer rose above humdrumne