3 THE FALL Our spirit is a paradise blown down, A sun deflowered, a leprosy of light; But all its crumbling sacrificial sparks Drop from the inviolate ether to arouse An earth-apocalypse slumbering unlit, A brazier of giant mystery Lost like a mouth of dream whose tongue lacks fire! The shredded silver and the shrunken gold, Caught by this dark divinity of clay, Shall laugh and blossom brighter than the unmarred Roses of heaven rooted in sapphire hush. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Not overhead except in substance, but very fine poetry. The 'leprosy of light' is a rather violent expression perhaps, but s

THIS ERRANT LIFE This errant life is dear although it dies; And human lips are sweet though they but sing Of stars estranged from us; and youth's emprise Is wondrous yet, although an unsure thing. Sky-lucent Bliss untouched by earthiness! I fear to soar lest tender bonds decrease. If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow Its mortal longings, lean down from above, Temper the unborn light no thought can trace, Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow. For 'tis with mouth of clay I supplicate: Speak to me heart to heart words intimate, And all Thy formless glory turn to love And mould Thy love into a huma

DESCENT A secret of far sky burns suddenly close, A deep blue wakes to glory from pale blue: Then large and calm and effortless wings of light Swoop crimson through the paradisal air! Talons of eyrie truth—a clutch of gold— Numb every thought to a shining vacancy Merged in the immortal spaciousness around This haloed hawk that preys on time-desire... My body, wrapt in the vast apocalypse, Grows king of Nature with the mystic bird A flaming crown of godhead over life! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is certainly very original and expresses with great force the spiritual experience. A very fine poem—most of it being in

IN TERRAM Why this indignity that from the brave Height of soul-lustre into a broken grave Man's yearning flesh should drop and all his drouth Of planet-passion kiss the worm's cold mouth? What treasure yet unknown draws down his mood, Whose heart is fashioned for infinitude? Surely some God-abyss calls out to him! ... We die and all our winged senses dim Because we have not dreamed the goal of birth, The arcane eternity coring dull earth. O omnipresent Light, break from below As in the constellate seasons of our mind: Rise up and flower in these cells of woe, Flush the wan nerves, breathe your immense g

PHARPHAR ("...Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams"—Milton) Where is the glassy gold of Pharphar Or its echoing silver-grey When the magic ethers of evening Wash one the various day? I have travelled the whole earth over Yet never found The beautiful body of Pharphar Or its soul of secret sound. But all my dreams are an answer To Pharphar's blmd career; And the songs that I sing are an image Of quiets I long to hear. For, only this unreached beauty No time shall mar— This river of infinite distance, Pharphar. Page-113 Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very beautiful indeed, subtle and g

HIMALAYA The tides of gold and silver sweep the sky But bring no tremor to my countenance: How shall sun-rise or moon-ebb lure, when I Have gripped the Eternal in a rock of trance? Here centuries lay down their pilgrim cry, Drowsed with the power in me to press my whole Bulk of unchanging peace upon the eye And weigh that vision deep into the soul. My frigid love no calls of earth can stir. Straight upward climbs my hush—but this lone flight Reveals me to broad earth an emperor Ruling all time's horizons through sheer height! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "A very fine poem. The lines marked are very fine and li

SOUL OF SONG I have been quiet a long while To fill my singing smile With a magic beyond the lips of man And very quiet will I be After the burst of minstrelsy To find at the close The light with which my tune began. Glowing behind The singer's mind, A mystery journeys forth to meet Across the rapture of rhyming feet Its own unplumbed repose. Come then, O listeners, with a tranquil mood To feel far more than the loud heart knows; Or else the King who moves through the common word Shall never be heard And keep unseen the strange infinitude He bears above our mortal woes, The

YOGA "Torment not with intangible fulgences! O master, to my hungry life impart The nectarous truth of yon Sky-Spirit unheard Whose sole revealing word Is a touch of cold far flame upon my heart! Of what avail mute mystic suns of snow?" "Banish from your dream-night The burning blindness of earth-hued desire, That scorching shadow masked as living light! Then only can your misery's Heart-hunger know The multi-splendoured sweetness of truth-glow, The embracing fire Of His inscrutable omnipotent peace!" Sri Aurobindo's Comment "I fear it is only eloquence—a long way from the Mantra. From the point of

GNOSIS No clamorous wing-waft knew the deeps of gold. An eagle lost in earth-forgetfulness, Rising without one stir of dreamy feather, Life gains the Unmeasured through a flame of sleep— A love whose heart is white tranquillity Upborne by vast surrender to this Sun. Flickering no longer with the cry of clay, The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind Embraces there its own eternal Self— Truth's burning core poised over the universe! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It has become by the omitted and added lines a finer poem than before. The first line had lost much of its power through being cut off from immediate connection with the e

5 HARMONIES Unfathomed harmonies roll, drowning our sight In purple of their passionate abyss— A superhuman solitude of night Sprung from a deep where all the waves are bliss. O waves divine, dark to our shuddering eyes, You float a fire that glooms each common glow! Sweep over foundering thought your rhythmic skies Until we gain some marvellous earth below. There still the pure Atlantis shall be found Of rapture lost by souls unluminous: There rings of silver memories surround An empty throne of gold awaiting us. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is more mental than usual—but the vision and