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COLLECTED POEMS
SRI AUROBINDO
CONTENTS
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Night by the Sea
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Love, a moment drop thy hands; Night within my soul expands. Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair In that dark and showering hair. Coral kisses ravish not When the soul is tinged with thought; Burning looks are then forbid. Let each shyly-parted lid Hover like a settling dove O’er those deep-blue wells of Love. Darkness brightens; silvering flee Pomps of foam the driven sea.
In this garden’s dim repose Lighted with the burning rose, Soft narcissi’s golden camp Glimmering or with rosier lamp Censered honeysuckle guessed
By the fragrance of her breast, —
On these happy solitudes!
Ocean, old historian, tells Hidden in the pleasant years. Summer’s children, what do ye
By the stern and cheerless sea? Heard the mighty Ocean moan By this treasure-house of flowers In the sweet ambiguous hours. Many a girl’s lips ruby-red Page -16
With their vernal honey fed With Love’s rosy sunlight blushed.
Ruddy lips of many a boy
Ruby-guided through a kiss
Coming slowly from the hill Singing heard as though a bee
Noontide waters on the sea. And thy glorious garland, sweet, Kissed not once those wandering feet.
All the lights of spring are ended, Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure, Cheeks enrosed, Love’s natal soil, Breasts, the ardent conqueror's spoil,
Spring rejects; a lovelier child Could the white hand more relume
Writing and refresh the bloom
Dies unloved by later men.
Shall a longer date be ours,
By the everlasting sea? Are they blown as legends tell In the smoke and gurge of hell ? Page -17 Writhe they in relucent gyres
O’er a circle sad of fires? Or unmurmuring alleys stray? Fields no sunlight visits, streams Where no happy lotus gleams? Yet, where’er their steps below, Memories sweet for comrades go. Lethe’s waters had their will, But the soul remembers still. Beauty pays her boon of breath To thy narrow credit, Death, Leaving a brief perfume; we
Perish also by the sea. Lose the clear and silent moon,
The serenities of night In the widening East is born, Never feel the west-wind stir, Spring’s delightful messenger,
Never under branches lain
Watch the moments of the tree,
Thoughts, the children of the tomb. Dawn relumes the immortal skies. Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes? Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete Lest too soon the allotted day Page -18 End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep. In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
Like a rose of Indian grain, Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
With such thoughts as shake the sea.
She in her garden, near the high grey wall,
Sleeping; a silver-bodied birch-tree tall Building a parapet of shade between, Forbidding the amorous sun to look on her.
No fold of gracious raiment was astir. Listening; of all the tree no leaf was loud, But guarded a divine expectant hush Thrilled by the silence of a hidden thrush. Page -19 |