SAVITRI A rose of dawn, her smile lights every gaze— Her love is like a nakedness of noon: No flame but breathes in her the Spirit's calm And pours the omnipresence of a sun. Her tongues of fire break from a voiceless deep Dreaming the taste of some ineffable height— A cry to clasp the one God-hush in all, A universal hunger's white embrace That from the Unknown leaps burning to the Unknown. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Exceedingly fine; both the language and rhythm are very powerful and highly inspired. When the inspiration is there, you reach more and more a peculiar fusion of the three influences, higher mental, illu

APE ON FIRE Fuelled with forests I come, an ape on fire, A brown beast burning towards the unbarred Blue, Fierce brain that feels suddenly the skull blown off, Blind belly crying to be an abysm of stars! Helpless with flame that snatches them from earth, My terrible arms strain reddening in mid-air— Love that has lost the ecstasy it can grasp, To embrace the bourneless body of the beyond. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "The lines you have sent me no doubt have a remarkable force, especially three or four of them, but I do not know that I can say positively from what level or source they come. Perhaps the Illumined Mind but not pur

GREAT MOTHER Great Mother, grant me this one boon I crave: I will forgo all triumphs of the mind And grandiose honours for which men have pined If in its search for Thee my life be brave. Beyond earth's crowded hours of brief delight, Of passionate anarchy whose eyes are blind, Let me on feet of calm devotion find The lonely soul's sweet contemplative height. And from the crest of that serenity Whence Thy far infinite face can be divined, An endless song let all my ardour be To reach Thy beauty, leaving lust behind — No stern forced worship but love self-consigned, A river's leap towards the pristine sea. Sri

THANK GOD... Thank God for all this wretchedness of love— The close apocalypt fires that only prove The shutting of some golden gate in the face! Not here beside us burning a brief space Of life is ecstasy: immense, above, The shining core of a divine abyss Awaits the earth-unglamoured lonely gaze, The tense heart broken into widenesses! All quiver and cry of time is splendoured there By an ageless alchemy smiling everywhere. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Perfect in thought and expression. 'The tense heart broken into widenesses' is a very fine line. (I suppose 'alchemy' can smile— usually it doesn't.)" Nir

FROM BEATRICE IN HEAVEN Each time your eyes of longing rose above All transient colour to the Invisible, Their viewless worship mingled with my love. So, like the sun upon a blinded gaze You found a warmth of secret splendour spill And, though unvisioning, felt my rapturous face ... From these unshadowed paradisal tops No mortal beauty throws its narrow ray But only a lustre of immensity drops! Death leaves me here a timeless self behind— A dream unvestured of both night and day— Truth-glory naked in the Immortal Mind— An image sprung from God's untarnished core Of mystery beyond the clasp of

ABOVE ALL ROSES Giant roses, Gods of light, Glory and laugh and mingle On a dreamy height. But, ever and ever Above rose-red Flame and forgetfulness, Vigilling unwed Is a white, immense, Miraculous-blown Lily beyond time's dearth Yet very alone. Omnipotence, Infinitude, Eternity of splendour— All are subdued To a virgin breath Calling the far Earth-glooms of pain to marry Its soul of star. And therefore life Yearns and yearns— Feeling some limitless rapture Unmated burns. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine. All such poems

YOUR FACE Your face unveils the cry, Divinely deep, Heard from the inscrutable core Of mystic sleep— A lure of rapturous tune Where vision fails, Like a nest of heaven-hearted Nightingales. No hush of love could catch That soul of swoon: Dawn's body ever crossed My dream too soon. But now with a face of dawn Night yearns to me, Kindling the distances Of lost divinity. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "I don't find it brainy in any unpoetic sense—the turn in the last stanza might have been thought ingenious if it had not been given so fine a poetic form. A very fine little lyric with that i

-002_Editor^s Introduction.htm EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Here some poems are collected of a particular kind written by a disciple of Sri Aurobindo's, along with detailed appraisals of them by Sri Aurobindo himself. Following the appraisals are relevant excerpts from literary correspondence already published for the most part. This correspondence—barring a few instances—was with the same disciple and the excerpts have been either dovetailed to amplify the points of the immediate judgments or appended to present additional issues. They include, towards the end, a few remarks by Sri Aurobindo on some lines of his own. An epilogue consisting of a pertinently enlightening passage from Sri Aurobindo's epic

SILVER GRACE A love has sealed us one with paradise— A kiss of crescent moon upon earth's soul By virgin raptures dreaming in the blue That even the pit of hell is a buried sky. No warrior gold can pierce the veil of time; For God's own glory here has sunk asleep, And how shall that abyss of majesty Brook from its summit-self a lash of light? Therefore this love's seducing glimmer came, This haloed serpent of the Infinite, A white bliss curving through our blinded deeps To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "A very fine poem throughout. The 2nd and 3rd lines are

ASCENT A nectar-dew falls glimmering from the Unknown To wake the shadowless seed of mystic love Lost in the blind abysses of the brain. A memory stirs the locked immensity— An occult creative Eye now yearns afar. Dreams upward through a gilded sky of mind, The hard deceiving dome of a false heaven, To an infinite ether of apocalypt blue. Then slowly breaks on hyalines of hush A white rumour of flames and fragrances, A vast virginity kindles above time. The lotus of the soul has lifted high A million rapturous petal-arms to clasp The secret of a sempiternal sun. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Al