Urvasi   CANTO III   So was a goddess won to mortal arms; And for twelve months he held her on the peaks, In solitary vastnesses of hills And regions snow-besieged. There in dim gorge And tenebrous ravine and on wide snows Clothed with deserted space, o'er precipices With the far eagles wheeling under them, Or where large glaciers watch, or under cliffs O'er-murmured by the streaming waterfalls, And later in the pleasant lower hills, He of her beauty world-desired took joy: And all earth's silent sublime spaces passed Into his blood and grew a part of thought. Twelve months in the gre

  The Rishi   King Manu in the former ages of the world, when the Arctic continent still subsisted, seeks knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who after long baffling him with conflicting side- lights of the knowledge, reveals to him what it chiefly concerns man to know.   MANU Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old Art slumbering, void Of sense or motion, for in the spirit's hold Of unalloyed Immortal bliss thou dreamst protected! Deep Let my voice glide Into thy dumb retreat and break thy sleep Abysmal. Hear! The frozen snows that heap thy giant bed Ice-cold and clear,

  Index of First Lines   A bare impersonal hush is now my mind A conscious and eternal Power is here A deep enigma is the soul of man A dumb Inconscient drew life's stumbling maze A face on the cold dire mountain peaks A far sail on the unchangeable monotone . . . A flame-wind ran from the gold of the east A godhead moves us to unrealised things A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly A golden evening, when the thoughtful sun A life of intensities wide, immune A naked and silver-pointed star A noon of Deccan with its tyrant glare A perfect face amid barbarian faces A strong son of

  BOOK IX   Meanwhile moved by their unseen spirits, led by the immortal Phalanxes, who of our hopes and our fears are the reins and the drivers,  — Minds they use as if steam and our bodies like power-driven engines, Leading our lives towards the goal that the gods have prepared for our striving,  — Men upon earth fulfilled their harsh ephemeral labour. But in the Troad the armies clashed on the plain of the Xanthus. Swift from their ships the Argives marched,  —  more swiftly through Xanthus Driving their chariots the Trojans came and Penthesilea Led and Anchises' son and Deiphobus

  BOOK VI   The Book of the Chieftains   Then as from common hills great Pelion rises to heaven So from the throng uprearing a brow that no crown could ennoble, Male and kingly of front like a lion conscious of puissance Rose a form august, the monarch great Agamemnon. Wroth he rose yet throwing a rein on the voice of his passion, Governing the beast and the demon within by the god who is mighty. "Happy thy life and my fame that thou com'st with the aegis of heaven Shadowing thy hoary brows, thou herald of pride and of insult. Well is it too for his days who sent thee that other and nobler

  Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1891 ­ 1898     To a Hero-Worshipper   I   My life is then a wasted ereme, My song but idle wind Because you merely find In all this woven wealth of rhyme Harsh figures with harsh music wound, The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds, A ruby carcanet of sound, A cloud of lovely words?   I am, you say, no magic rod, No cry oracular, No swart and ominous star, No Sinai thunder voicing God. I have no burden to my song, No smouldering word instinct with fire, No spell to chase triumphant wrong, No spirit-s

'Collected Poems' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50   Part Two   Baroda Circa 1898 ­ 1902     Complete Narrative Poems     Urvasie   CANTO I   Pururavus from Titan conflict ceased Turned worldwards, through illimitable space Had travelled like a star 'twixt earth and heaven Slowly and brightly. Late our mortal air He breathed; for downward now the hooves divine Trampling out fire with sound before them went, And the great earth rushed up towards him, green. With the first line of dawn he touched the peaks, Nor paused upon those savage heights, bu

  Poems from Manuscripts Circa 1912 ­ 1913     The Descent of Ahana   I AHANA Strayed from the roads of Time, far-couched on the void I have slumbered; Centuries passed me unnoticed, millenniums perished unnumbered. I, Ahana, slept. In the stream of thy sevenfold Ocean, Being, how hast thou laboured without me? Whence was thy motion? Not without me can thy nature be satisfied. But I came fleeing;  — Vexed was my soul with the joys of sound and weary of seeing; Into the deeps of my nature I lapsed, I escaped into slumber. Out of the silence who call me back to t

  BOOK VIII   The Book of the Gods   So on the earth the seed that was sown of the centuries ripened; Europe and Asia, met on their borders, clashed in the Troad. All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for, Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in silence Joy, by the cloud and the sunbeam veiled, and men know not their movers. They in the glens of Olympus, they by the waters of Ida Or in their temples worshipped in vain or with heart-strings of

  Part Six   Baroda and Pondicherry Circa 1902 ­ 1936     Poems Past and Present     Musa Spiritus   O Word concealed in the upper fire, Thou who hast lingered through centuries, Descend from thy rapt white desire, Plunging through gold eternities.   Into the gulfs of our nature leap, Voice of the spaces, call of the Light! Break the seals of Matter's sleep, Break the trance of the unseen height.   In the uncertain glow of human mind, Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts, Carve thy epic mountain-lined Crowded wit