ANANDA Rapture that cuts away time-transient shows Like petals from the odour of a rose: One breath of luminous all-absorbing hush— So wide a love that nowhere need it rush: Calm ether of an infinite embrace— Beauty unblurred by limbs or longing face. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very beautiful. Higher and Illumined Minds rolled into each other with the Intuition to give an uplifting touch." Page-46

"OVERHEAD POETRY" POEMS WITH SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENTS Edited by K. D. SETHNA SRI AU ROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION PONDICHERRY First Edition : March 1972 March 1972 © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1972 Published by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA PUBLISHERS' NOTE As Sri Aurobindo's work in various fields comes more and more to be known, an increasing number of questions are put by earnest seekers. In the spher

GOD-SCULPTURE "No man to immortal beauty woke But by My music of stroke on stroke Should I disdain to hurt your deep Rigidities of clay-bound sleep, How would you bear a thrilled impress Of My unshadowed loveliness? Pain like a chisel I've brought to trace The death of pain upon your face: Each curve and line new-wrought shall be A tangible God-ecstasy. If earth's hard gloom I never broke With the keen fire of shaping stroke, Creation would forfeit its aim— To house the paradisal flame In no vague momentary mood But kindle with infinitude Rapture as of eternal stone! Must n

EXILE With you unseen, what shall my song adore? Though waves foam-garland all the saffron shore My music cannot mingle with their tone, Because a purer worship I have known. How shall I join the birds' delight of space, Whose eyes have winged the heaven of your face? Or with the rain urge blossoms to be sweet, When I have lost the altar of your feet? A lone tranquillity whose eyelids fall Is now my only voice, for thus I call Your godhead back: the gates of outwardness I shut and my lost rapture repossess— Your spirit in my spirit, deep in the deep, Walled by a wizardry of shining sleep. Sri Aurobindo's Comme

MUKTI What deep dishonour that the soul should have Its passion moulded by a moon of change And all its massive purpose be a wave Ruled by time's gilded glamours that estrange Being from its true goal of motionless Eternity ecstatic and alone, Poised in calm plenitudes of consciousness— A sea unheard where spume nor spray is blown! Be still, oceanic heart, withdraw thy sense From fickle lure of outward fulgencies. Clasp not in vain the myriad earth to appease The hunger of thy God-profundities: Not there but in self-rapturous suspense Of all desire is thy omnipotence! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Congratulations! I

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