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COLLECTED POEMS
SRI AUROBINDO
CONTENTS
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II
SONNETS
Early
Period
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To the Cuckoo
Sounds of the wakening world, the year’s increase, Passage of wind and all his dewy powers With breath and laughter of new-bathed flowers And that deep light of heaven above the trees Awake mid leaves that muse in golden peace Sweet noise of birds, but most in heavenly showers The cuckoo’s voice pervades the lucid hours, Is priest and summoner of these melodies. The spent and weary streams refresh their youth At that creative rain and barren groves Regain their face of flowers; in thee the ruth Of Nature wakening her dead children moves. But chiefly to renew thou hast the art Fresh childhood in the obscured human heart.
Transiit, non Periit
(My grandfather, Rajnarayan Bose, died September 1899)
Not in annihilation lost, nor given To darkness art thou fled from us and light, O strong and sentient spirit; no mere heaven Of ancient joys, no silence eremite Received thee; but the omnipresent Thought Of which thou wast a part and earthly hour, Took back its gift. Into that splendour caught Thou hast not lost thy special brightness. Power Remains with thee and the old genial force Unseen for blinding light, not darkly lurks: As when a sacred river in its course Dives into ocean, there its strength abides Not less because with vastness wed and works Unnoticed in the grandeur of the tides. Page-123
What is this talk of slayer and of slain? Swords are not sharp to slay nor floods assuage This flaming soul. Mortality and pain Are mere conventions of a mightier stage. As when a hero by his doom pursued Falls like a pillar of the world uptorn, Shaking the hearts of men, and awe-imbued Silent the audience sits of joy forlorn, Meanwhile behind the stage the actor sighs Deep-lunged relief, puts by what he has been And talks with friends that waited, or from the flies Watches the quiet of the closing scene, Even so the unwounded spirits of slayer and slain Beyond our vision passing live again.
To weep because a glorious sun
To weep because a glorious sun has set Which the next morn shall gild the east again; To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate Which by that force a double strength attain; To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife Joy could not be, to make a terror of death Who smiling beckons us to farther life, And is a bridge for the persistent breath; Despair and anguish and the tragic grief Of dry set eyes, or such disastrous tears As rend the heart, though meant for its relief, And all man’s ghastly company of fears Are born of folly that believes the span Of life the limit of immortal man. Page-124
I have a hundred lives before me yet To grasp thee in, O Spirit ethereal, Be sure I will with heart insatiate Pursue thee like a hunter through them all. Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way And with awakened vision watch me come Smiling a little at errors past and lay Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home. Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness I shall approach thee in things and people dear, And in thy spirit's motions half-possess, Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near, Until I lay my hands on thee indeed Somewhere among the stars, as ’twas decreed. Page-125 |
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