INCARNATION Would you conceive her self? A sheer abyss Of reverie existing by its own Grandeur of inexhaustible silences That know all secrets through a light unknown. Nor her divinity the clay ensheathes: Those pure immitigable joys unblind Each human pore and her whole body breathes The large and lustrous odour of her mind. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is very good. Such inversions as in the fifth line should not be too often used, as in modern English they are apt to be puzzling. It is from the Illumined Mind that the poem as a whole seems to have come. Most of your poems now are from there. "Lines 1-3: Illumined s

MERE OF DREAM The Unknown above is a mute vacancy— But in the mere of dream wide wings are spread. An ageless bird poising a rumour of gold Upon prophetic waters hung asleep. The veils of vastitude are cloven white, The burden of unreachable blue is lost: A ring of hills around a silver hush, The far mind haloed with mysterious dawn Treasures in the deep eye of thought-suspense An eagle-destiny beaconing through all time. Sri Aurobindo's Comment On an earlier version not including lines 5 and 6: "First line from the higher Mind, the next five from the illumined Mind—the last two I can't very well s

UNBIRTHED A grip is broken loose Within my chest— Titan steel jointures part Their deep-grey rest In some blind cosmic plan Solidding night To crypt the fire that is man, To dungeon the height His dreamful mind remembers.... With a shining start, Suddenly rapture-russet, A hammer is the heart! Page-77 Golden beat upon beat Wounds the black room Like a burst of rhythmic suns Through vaulted gloom. Ruined is the house of birth, Time's steel is scrap, And where the Shadow brooded Is a glowing gap. Eagles of truth sweep down With their prophecies,

-093_God^s World.htm GOD'S WORLD |How shall the witness mind's tranquillity +Catch the extravagant happiness of God's world? |To reach one goal He flings a million paths +Laughing with sheer love of the limitless, Wandering for centuries in secret glory, |Then striking home a single light of lights! |Marvellous the pattern of His prodigal power, But vainly the philosopher will brood +This sable serpent flecked with sudden stars. +Coil after coil of unpredictable dream Will set his logic whirling till it drops. Only the poet with wide eyes that feel +Each form a shining gate to depths beyond Knows through the magic measures of his tune

TALISMAN (Suggested by a refrain from Morris) The hallowing moon-white Obscurity of night— Aroma of a love-hush blown From the inviolate unknown— And then once more time's cleaving cry... But in wide wonder beyond death A trance of beauty grew life-breath Behind a shield of memory, Limned with one red rose strewn Across a perfect moon. Sri Aurobindo picked out in particular the first two and the last three lines and characterised them as having "a delicate, richly-subdued colour of mystic light". Page-75

MAYA A scorching shadow masked as living light, Earth's smile of painted passion withers now! But is there hollow on black ravenous hollow How pass then reveries of angelic wings Revealing the blind heart of all desire? Surely some haloed beauty hides within The mournful spaces of unlustred limbs To call with secret eyes a perfect Sun Whose glory yearns across the drouth of hell! Behind the false glow dreams the epiphany— But like a face of night implacable Save to the soul's virginity, the unknown White fire whose arms enclasp infinitude.... Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Exceedingly fine. I have mar

EACH NIGHT Dream not with gaze hung low By love That earthward calls—but know The silver spaces move Within your eyes when sleep Brings gloom: Then will your hush grow deep As heaven's lofty room And in this chamber strange With blue A love unmarred by change Shall ever tryst with you. So, build Her each calm night A swoon That bears on outer sight The padlock of the moon. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "The inspiration is, I think, from the same place. An easy and luminous simplicity that is at the same time very felicitous." Page-66

AGNI Not from the day but from the night he's born, Night with her pang of dream—star on pale star Winging strange rumour through a secret dawn. For all the black uncanopied spaces mirror The brooding distance of our plumbless mind. O depth of gloom, reveal thy unknown light— Awake our body to the alchemic touch Of the great God who comes with minstrel hands!... Lo, now my heart has grown his glimmering East: Blown by his breath a cloud of colour runs: The yearning curves of life are lit to a smile. O mystic sun, arise upon our thought And with thy gold omnipotence make each face The centre of some blue infini

DEEPS Silent I roam by the tumultuous sea That, unreminded of man's mortal noise, My heart may feel the imperishable voice Waken a solitary god in me. Travails of time are sunk: the pure deeps grow, By their miraculous infinite of sound, Measure of some tranquillity profound That never human grief can overthrow. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is quite up to the mark—very fine. Higher Mind, I think, with lines 6 and 7 raised up to what might be called (if we must find a name for these combinations) Higher Mind Intuition. There are various combinations possible, as in the process of sublimation each higher plane infuses itself into

WHITE MURDER A quick stiletto's smile of poignancy, The pang of paradise cleaves through the heart, Committing against our human blood's career A lustrous crime of immortality. Truth's lightning stab—and from the core of life Rich reveries flow to some unscrutable deep, While over a precipice of infinitude Clay-burdens drop, a trance-fall out of time. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very forcibly conceited. In its kind it is eminently successful." (Another piece—somewhat similar in tone and turn to White Murder, but perhaps not openly " conceited" . What is its source of inspiration?) Page-103