EVANESCENCE Where lie the past noon-lilies And vesper-violets gone? Into what strange invisible deep Fall out of time the roses of each dawn? They draw for us a dream-way To ecstasies unhoured, Where all earth's form-hues flicker and drop, By some great wind of mystery overpowered. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "The simple revealing directness and beauty evoke without effort a pure sense of mystic truth. The opening stanza and continuation are exceedingly fine, full of magic suggestion. In the last two fines there is a mixture of the intuitive and the illumined, the rest is pure intuitive—but occult because it is from a province

NIGHT-HILLS Here on night-hills all passion-clamours cease: And to the wonder-spacious lonely mind The word of the incomprehensible wind Bears but a perfume of eternal peace; Until—on highest crags of heaven-surmise— Evoked by a spirit moon from the heart's deep, Plumbless inaudible waves of shining sleep Drown the mortality of lifted eyes. Sri Aurobindo's Comment Lines 2, 3, 4—"It is from the Illumined Mind that they come with a touch of the mystic intuitive, but only a touch." Lines 6, 7, 8—"These lines have a very high poetic and mystic value. They are a mixed result of Illumined Mind and occult vision with so

DISCLOSURE Stoop your calm beauty—let your shining hair Unveil its ages of high secrecy To float upon dull earth the frankincense Your face of love burns to an infinite sky. Fill life with mystic rondures of your breast And all that worship dreamed unknowable Bare through your body's perfect universe. O mate the sculptor-vigil of our gloom With those superb clay-lines that sing your soul: Then every stroke of time shall carve to birth Immortal moods lit by your ecstasy. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine poetry. Blank verse rhythm very good. Illumined Higher Mind." * Page-87

APOTHEOSIS Spurning the narrow cities of your mind, Climb to the turquoise dome of distances Where Nature's spirit wears a measureless crown— The unwalled glory of some Tartar day, The inscrutable puissance of a Negro night. There every straining mood brims infinite, An all-submerging primal mystery, A waveless ocean of omnipotent ease— Or like all heaven's truth-core flames the will! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "The Tartar day and Negro night have vividness and power; the other lines are very fine poetry. As a whole, the Higher Mind with a touch of Illumination." * Page-105

POOL OF LONELINESSES I have become a secret pool Of lonelinesses mountain-cool, A dream-poise of unuttered song Lifted above the restless throng Of human moods' dark pitchers wrought Of fragile and of flawful thought. Now never more my tunes shall flow In moulds of common joy and woe; But seraph hands reveal wide jars Cut from the solitudes of stars And stoop across the sky to fill The perfect shapes of their calm will With musical obedience From my pellucid time-suspense; And in their crystalline control Of heaven-mooded ecstasy Carry the waters of my soul Unto God's sacr

INVOCATION TO THE FOURFOLD DIVINE O Void where deathless power is merged in peace! O myriad Passion lit to one self-fire! O Breath like some vast rose that breaks through form! O Hush of gold by whom all truth is heard! Consume in me the blinded walls of mind: Wing far above dull thought my speech with flame, Make my desire an infinite sky's embrace, A joy that feels through every colour's throb One single heart kindling the universe— And by strange sleep draw heaven closer still, Blotting all distances of space and time! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "That is perfect—it is all of one pi

DRAGON A cry of gold piercing the spine's dark sleep, A dragon fire consuming mortal thought, An aureoled hunger that makes time fall dead, My passion curves from bliss to heavenward bliss. Kindling the rhythm of a myriad smile, This white wave lifted by some virgin deep I Breaks through the embodied moments of the mind To a starry universe of infinite trance. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "All the lines are very fine, especially those marked. The three first of each stanza have a great intensity of vision—Higher Mind plus Overmind Intuition touch. The last—Higher Mind plus Illumined Mind—is not equal in vision but still not to

DELUGE You fear clay's solid rapture will be gone If once your love dives deep to the Unknown— But how shall body not seem a hollow space When the soul bears eternity's embrace?— Eternity which to the outward glance Is some unmoving painted sea of trance, Lifeless, an artist's dream—but suddenly Those phantom colours wake and the whole sea Hurls from its pictured distance, drowning the eyes In a passionate world of dense infinities! No longer will you talk of shadowy bliss: With measureless life God comes, and our flesh-form Sways like a weed in His enfolding storm. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It i

4 OUT OF THE UNKNOWN Out of the unknown, like meteor-rain Fell glimmering on my dark despair The syllables of a prophetic tongue: "O heart disconsolate, beauty-wrung, Wanderer unsated, not in vain A voice of unattainable melody Winging in heavenly air, Came Brindavan's immortal memory And turned thy human happiness Into dim longing pain. Thy life's search is not meaningless Though Jumuna's banks are void and bare; Now too a spirit-flute Conveys again so holy a calm abroad That even on misery's lips fallen mute In uncompanioned throes Pale silence blossoms like a ro

6 TIME-TELESCOPE "How can thy reverie's molecule of sight Pierce the lone reaches of the starred Obscure? Mix with my largening thought whose deep and pure Quiet brings close the eternal harmonies! Across my length of vigil, nectars move: I am a crystal medium of far light, Through whom the unattainable galaxies Glow with a luminous Mother's intimate love!" Sri Aurobindo's Comment (Does my consistent sustaining of the telescope image throughout by expressions like "largening thought", "brings close", "length of vigil", "crystal medium of far light", etc., put the poem in the class of what might be called "inspired