{"id":1492,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:10","slug":"88-ahana-vol-05-collected-poems-volume-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/05-collected-poems-volume-05\/88-ahana-vol-05-collected-poems-volume-05","title":{"rendered":"-88_Ahana.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n


\nAHANA<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nA
\npoem in rhymed quantitative hexameters<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n


\nAhana<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n
\n(Ahana, the Dawn of God, descends on the world where amid the strife and trouble
\nof mortality the Hunters of Joy, the Seekers after Knowledge, the Climbers in
\nthe quest of Power are toiling up the slopes or waiting in the valleys. As she
\nstands on the mountains of the East, voices of the Hunters of Joy are the first
\nto greet her.)<\/p>\n

V<\/b>ision delightful alone on the hills whom the silences cover,
\nCloser yet lean to mortality; human, stoop to thy lover.
\nWonderful, gold like a moon in the square of the sun where thou strayest
\nGlimmers thy face amid crystal purities; mighty thou playest
\nSole on the peaks of the world, unafraid of thy loneliness. Glances
\nLeap from thee down to us, dream-seas and light-falls and magical trances;
\nSun-drops flake from thy eyes and the heart’s caverns packed are with pleasure
\nStrange like a song without words or the dance of a measureless measure.
\nTread through the edges of dawn, over twilight’s grey-lidded margin;
\nHeal earth’s unease with thy feet, 0 heaven-born delicate virgin.
\nChildren of Time whose spirits came down from eternity, seizing
\nJoys that escape us, yoked by our hearts to a labour unceasing,
\nEarth-bound, torn with our longings, our life is a brief incompleteness.
\nThou hast the stars to sport with, the winds run like bees to thy sweetness.
\nArt thou not heaven-bound even as I with the earth? Hast thou ended
\nAll desirable things in a stillness lone and unfriended?
\nOnly is calm so sweet? is our close tranquillity only?
\nCold are the rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
\nHeavy is godhead to bear with its mighty sun-burden of lustre.
\nArt thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster,
\nSky-hung the chill bare plateaus and peaks where the eagle rejoices
\nIn the inhuman height of his nesting, solitude’s voices
\nMaking the heart of the silence lonelier? strong and untiring,
\nDeaf with the cry of the waterfall, lonely the pine lives aspiring.
\nTwo are the ends of existence, two are the dreams of the Mother:
\nHeaven unchanging, earth with her time-beats yearn to each other,-
\nEarth-souls needing the touch of the heavens peace to recapture,
\nHeaven needing earth’s passion to quiver its peace into rapture.
\nMarry, 0 lightning eternal, the passion of a moment-born fire!
\nOut of thy greatnes draw close to the breast of our mortal desire!
\nIs he thy master, Rudra the mighty, Shiva ascetic?
\nHas he denied thee his world? In his dance that they tell of, ecstatic "<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Page-523<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nSlaying,
\ncreating, calm in the midst of the movement and madness,
\nStole there no rhythm of an earthly joy and a mortal sadness?
\nWast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beauty
\nMove like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy duty
\nGraved in thy heart as on tablets of fate; joy’s delicate blossom
\nSleeps in thy lids of delight; all Nature hides in thy bosom
\nClaiming her children unborn and the food of her love and her laughter.
\nIs he the first? was there none then before him? shall none come after?
\nHe who denies and his blows beat down on our hearts like a hammer’s,
\nHe whose calm is the silent reply to our passion and clamours!
\nIs not there deity greater here new-born in a noble
\nLabour and sorrow and struggle than stilled into rapture immobile?
\nEarth has beatitudes warmer than heaven’s that are bare and undying,
\nMarvels of Time on the crest of the moments to Infinity flying.
\nEarth has her godheads; the Tritons sway on the toss of the billows,
\nEmerald locks of the Nereids stream on their foam-crested pillows, –
\nDryads peer out from the branches, Naiads glance up from the waters;
\nHigh are her flame-points of joy and the gods are ensnared by her daughters.
\nArtemis calls as she flees through the glades and the breezes pursue her;
\nCyris laughs in her isles where the ocean-winds linger to woo her.
\nHere thou shalt meet amid beauty forgotten the dance of the Graces;
\nNight shall be haunted for ever with strange and delicate faces.
\nMusic is here of the fife and the flute and the lyre and the timbal,
\nWind in the forests, bees in the grove, -spring’s ardent symbol
\nThrilling, the cry of the cuckoo; the nightingale sings in the branches,
\nHuman laughter is heard and the cattle low in the ranches.
\nFrankly and sweetly she gives to her children the bliss of her body,
\nBreath of her lips and the green of her garments, rain-pourings heady
\nTossed from her cloud-carried beaker of tempest, oceans and streamlets,
\nDawn and the mountain-air, corn-fields and vineyards, pastures and hamlets,
\nTangles of sunbeams asleep, mooned dream-depths, twilight’s shadows,
\nTaste and scent and the fruits of her trees and the flowers of her meadows,
\nLife with a wine-cup of longing under the purple of her tenture,
\nDeath as her gate of escape and rebirth and renewal of venture.
\nStill must they mutter that all here is vision and passing appearance,
\nMagic of Maya with falsehood and pain for its only inherence.
\nOne is there only, apart in his greatness, the End and Beginning,-
\nHe who has sent through his soul’s wide spaces the universe spinning.
\nOne eternal, Time an illusion, life a brief error!
\nOne eternal, Master of heaven – and of hell and its terror!<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-524<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nSpirit
\nof silence and purity rapt and aloof from creation, –<\/i>
\nDreaming through aeons unreal his splendid and empty formation!
\nSpirit all-wise in omnipotence shaping a world but to break it, –
\nPushed by what mood of a moment, the breath of what fancy to make it?
\nNone is there great but the eternal and lonely, the unique and unmated,
\nBliss lives alone with the self-pure, the single, the forever-uncreated.
\nTruths? or thought’s structures bridging the vacancy mute and unsounded
\nFacing the soul when it turns from the stress of the figures around it?
\nSolely we see here a world self-made by some indwelling Glory
\nBuilding with forms and events its strange and magnificent story.
\nYet at the last has not all been solved and unwisdom demolished,
\nMyth cast out and all dreams of the soul and all worship abolished?
\nAll now is changed, the reverse of the coin has been shown to us; Reason
\nWaking, detecting the hoax of the spirit, at last has arisen,
\nCaptured the Truth and built round her its bars that she may not skedaddle,
\nGallop again with the bit in her teeth and with Fancy in the saddle.
\nNow have the wise men discovered that all is the craft of a super-
\nMagic of Chance and a movement of Void and inconscient Stupor.
\nChance by a wonderful accident ever her ripples expanding
\nOut of a gaseous circle of Nothingness, implacably extending
\nFreak upon freak, repeating rigidly marvels on marvels,
\nMaking a world out of Nothing, started on the arc of her travels.
\nNothingness born into feeling and action dies back to Nothing.
\nSea of a vague electricity, romping through space-curves and clothing
\nStrangely the Void with a semblance of Matter, painfully flowered
\nInto this giant phenomenon universe. Man who has towered
\nOut of the plasm and struggled by thought to Divinity’s level,
\nMan, this miniature second creator of good and of evil,
\nHe too was only a compost of Matter made living, organic,
\nForged as her thinking tool by an Energy blind and mechanic.
\nOnce by an accident queer but quite natural, provable, simple,
\nOut of blind Space-Nought lashed into life, wearing Mind as its wimple,
\nDupe of a figment of consciousness, doped with behaviour and feature,
\nMatter deluded claimed to be spirit and sentient creature.
\nAll the high dreams man has dreamed and his hopes and his deeds, his soul’s
\n                                                                                                    greatness
\nAre but a food-seeking animal’s acts with the mind for their witness, –
\nMind a machine for the flickers of thought, Matter’s logic unpremissed, –
\nAre but a singular fireworks, chemistry lacking the chemist,
\nMatter’s nervous display; the heart’s passion, the sorrow and burning,<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-525<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nFire
\nof delight and sweet ecstasy, love and its fathomless yearning,
\nBoundless spiritual impulses making us one with world-being,
\nOutbursts of vision opening doors to limitless seeing,
\nGases and glands and the genes and the nerves and the brain-cells have
\n                                                                                                done it,
\nBrooded out drama and epic, structured the climb of the sonnet,
\nStudied the stars and discovered the brain and the laws of its thinking,
\nSculptured the cave-temple, reared the cathedral, infinity drinking
\nWrought manufacturing God and the soul for the uplift of Nature, –
\nScience, philosophy, head of his mystical chemical stature,
\nMusic and painting revealing the godhead in sound and in colour,
\nActs of the hero, thoughts of the thinker, search of the scholar,
\nAll the magnificent planning, all the inquiry and wonder
\nOnly a trick of the atom, its marvellous magical blunder.
\nWho can believe it? Something or someone, a Force or a Spirit
\nConscious, creative, wonderful shaped out a world to inherit
\nHere for the beings born from its vast universal existence, –
\nFields of surprise and adventure, vistas of light-haunted distance,
\nPlay-routes of wisdom and vision and struggle and rapture and sorrow,
\nSailing in Time through the straits of today to the sea of tomorrow.
\nWorlds and their wonders, suns and their flamings, earth and her nations,
\nVoyages endless of Mind through the surge of its fate-tossed creations,
\nStar upon star throbbing out in the silence of infinite spaces,
\nSpecies on species, bodies on bodies, faces on faces,
\nSouls without number crossing through Time towards eternity, aeons
\nCrowding on aeons, loving and battle, dirges and paeans,
\nThoughts ever leaping, hopes ever yearning, lives ever streaming,
\nMillions and millions on trek through the days with their doings and
\n                                                                                       
\ndreaming,
\nHerds of the Sun who move on at the cry of the radiant drover,-
\nCountless, surviving the death of the centuries, lost to recover,
\nFinished, but only to begin again, who is its tireless creator,
\nCause or the force of its driving, its thinker or formless dictator?
\nSurely no senseless Vacancy made it, surely ’twas fashioned
\nBy an almighty One million-ecstasied, thousand-passioned.
\nSelf-made? then by what self from which thought could arise and emotion,
\nWaves that well up to the surface, born from what mysteried ocean?
\nNature alone is the fountain. But what is she? Is she not only
\nFigure and name for what none understands, though all feel, or a lonely
\nWord in which all finds expression, spirit-heights, dumb work of Matter,-<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-526<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nVague
\ndesignation filling the gaps of our thought with its clatter?
\nPower without vision that blunders in man into thinking and sinning?
\nRigid vast inexhaustible mystery void of a meaning?
\nEnergy blindly devising, unconsciously ranging in order?
\nChance in the march of a cosmic Insanity crossing the border
\nOut of the eternal silence to thought and its strangeness and splendour?
\nConsciousness born by an accident until an accident end her?
\nNought else is she but the power of the Spirit who dwells in her ever,
\nWitness and cause of her workings, lord of her pauseless endeavour.
\nAll things she knows, though she seems here unseeing; even in her slumber
\nWondrous her works are, design and its magic and magic of number,
\nPlan of her mighty cosmic geometry, balance of forces,
\nUniverse flung beyond universe, law of the stars and their courses,
\nCosmos atomic stretched to the scale of the Infinite’s measure.
\nMute in the trance of the Eternal she sleeps with the stone and the azure.
\nNow she awakes; for life has just stirred in her, stretching first blindly
\nOutward for sense and its pleasure and pain and the gifts of the kindly
\nMother of all, for her light and her air and the sap from her flowing,
\nPleasure of bloom and inconscient beauty, pleasure of growing.
\nThen into mind she arises; heart’s yearning awakes and reflection
\nLooks out on struggle and harmony, – conscious, her will of selection
\nStudies her works and illumines the choice of her way; last, slowly
\nInward she turns and stares at the Spirit within her. Holy
\nSilences brood in her heart and she feels in her ardent recesses
\nPassions too great for her frame, on her body immortal caresses.
\nInto the calm of the Greatness beyond her she enters, burning
\nNow with a light beyond thought’s, towards Self and Infinity turning,
\nTurned to beatitude, turned to eternity, spiritual grandeur,
\nPower without limit, ecstasy imperishable, shadowless splendour.
\nThen to her mortals come, flashing, thoughts that are wisdom’s fire-kernel;
\nLeaping her flame-sweeps of might and delight and of vision supernal
\nKindle the word and the act, the Divine and humanity fusing,
\nIlluminations, trance-seeds of silence, flowers of musing, –
\nLight of our being that yet has to be, its glory and glimmer
\nSmiting with sunrise the soul of the sage and the heart of the dreamer.
\nOr is it all but a vain expectation and effort ungrounded,
\nWings without body, sight without object, waters unsounded,
\nHue of a shimmer that steals through some secret celestial portal,
\nGlory of a gleam or a dream in an animal brief-lived and mortal?
\nAre they not radiances native to heaven’s more fortunate ether,<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-527<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nWon
\nwhen we part from this body, this temporal house of a nether
\nMystery of life lived in vain? Upon earth is the glory forbidden,
\nNature for ever accursed, frustrate, grief-vexed, fate-ridden?
\nHalf of the glory she dreamed of forgotten or lost in earth’s darkness,
\nHalf of it mangled and missed as the death-wheels whirl in their starkness,
\nCast out from heaven a goddess rebellious with mind for her mirror,
\nCursed with desire and self-will and doomed to self-torture and error,
\nCame she to birth then with God for her enemy? Were we created
\nHe unwilling or sleeping? did someone transgress the fated
\nLimits he set, outwitting God? In the too hasty vision
\nMarred of some demiurge filmed there the blur of a fatal misprision,
\nMaking a world that revolves on itself in a circuit of failure,
\nAeons of striving, death for a recompense, Time for our tenure?
\nOut of him rather she came and for him are her cry and her labour;
\nDeep are her roots in him; topless she climbs, to his greatness a neighbour.
\nAll is himself in her, brooding in darkness, mounting the sun-ways:
\nAir-flight to him is man’s journey with heaven and earth for the runways.
\nHe is the witness and doer, he is the loved and the lover,
\nHe the eternal Truth that we look in ourselves to discover.
\nAll is his travel in Time; it is he who turns history’s pages,
\nAct and event and result are the trail that he leaves through the ages;
\nForm and idea are his signs and number and sound are his symbols,
\nMusic and singing, the word and its rhythm are Divinity’s cymbals,
\nThunder and surge are the drums of his marching. Through us, with urges
\nSelf-ward, form-bound, mute, motionless, slowly inevitably emerges
\nVast as the cosmos, minute as the atom, the Spirit eternal.
\nOften the gusts of his force illumining moments diurnal
\nFlame into speech and idea; transcendences splendid and subtle
\nSuddenly shoot through the weft of our looms from a magical shuttle;
\nHid in our hearts is his glory; the Spirit works in our members.
\nSilence is he, with our voices he speaks, in our thoughts he remembers.
\nDeep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher;
\nPowers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature.
\nOut of his Void we arise to a mighty and shining existence,
\nOut of Inconscience, tearing the black Mask’s giant resistance;
\nWaves of his consciousness well from him into these bodies in Nature,
\nForms are put round him; his oneness, divided by mind’s nomenclature,
\nHigh on the summits of being ponders immobile and single,
\nPenetrates atom and cell as the tide drenches sand-grain and shingle.
\nOneness unknown to us dwells in these millions of figures and faces,<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-528<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nWars
\nwith itself in our battles, loves in our clinging embraces,
\nInly the self and the substance of things and their cause and their mover
\nVeiled in the depths which the foam of our thoughts and our life’s billows
\ncover,
\nHeaves like the sea in its waves; like heaven with its star-fires it gazes
\nWatching the world and its works. Interned in the finite’s mazes,
\nStill shall he rise to his vast superconscience, we with him climbing;
\nTruth of man’s thought with the truth of God’s spirit faultlessly timing,
\nThat which was mortal shall enter immortality’s golden precincts,
\nHushed breath of ecstasy, honey of lotus-depths where the bee sinks,
\nTimeless expanses too still for the voice of the hours to inveigle,
\nSpaces of spirit too vast for the flight of the God-bearing eagle, –
\nEnter the Splendour that broods now unseen on us, deity invading,
\nSight without error, light without shadow, beauty unfading,
\nInfinite largeness, rapture eternal, love none can sever,
\nLife, not this death-play, but a power God-driven and blissful for ever.
\n"No," cry the wise, "for a circle was traced, there was pyloned a
\nlimit,
\nOnly we escape through dream’s thin passages. None can disclaim it;
\nAll things created are made by their borders, sketched out and coded;
\nVain is the passion to divinise manhood, humanise godhead.
\nNone can exceed himself; even to find oneself hard for our search is:
\nOnly we see as in night by a lustre of flickering torches.
\nTo be content with our measure, our space is the law of our living.
\nAll of thyself to thy manhood and Nature and Circumstance giving,
\nBe what thou must be or be what thou canst be, one hour in an era.
\nKnowing the truth of thy days, shun the light of ideal and chimera:
\nCurb heart’s impatience, bind thy desires down, pause from self-vexing."
\nWho is the nomad then? who is the seeker, the gambler risking
\nAll for a dream in a dream, the old and the sure and the stable
\nFlung as a stake for a prize that was never yet laid on the table?
\nAlways the world is expanding and growing from minute to minute;
\nPlaying the march of the adventure of Time with our lives for her spinet.
\nMaya or Nature, the wonderful Mother, strikes out surprising
\nStrains of the Spirit disprisoned; creation heavenward rising
\nWrestles with Time and Space and the Unknown to give form to the Formless.
\nBliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and death-blast and
\nstorm-race.
\nAll is a wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle.
\nVainly man, crouched in his corner of safety, shrinks from the fatal
\nLure of the Infinite. Guided by Powers that surround and precede us<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-529<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nFearful
\nand faltering steps are our perishing efforts that lead us
\nOn through the rooms of the finite till open the limitless spaces
\nAnd we can look into all-seeing eyes and imperishable faces.
\nBut we must pass through the aeons; Space is a bar twixt our ankles,
\nTime is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles:
\nCaught by the moments, held back from the spirit’s timelessness, slowly
\nWading in shallows we take not the sea-plunge vastly and wholly.
\nHard is the way to the Eternal for the mind-born will of the mortal
\nBound by the body and life to the gait of the house-burdened turtle.
\nHere in this world that knows not its morrow, this reason that stumbles
\nOnward from error to truth and from truth back to error while crumbles
\nAll that it fashioned, after the passion and travail are ended,
\nAfter the sacrifice offered when the will and the strength are expended,
\nNothing is done but to have laid down one stone of a road without issue,
\nAdded our quota of evil and good to an ambiguous tissue.
\nDestiny’s lasso, its slip-knot tied by delight and repining,
\nDraws us through tangles of failure and victory’s inextricable twining.
\nIn the hard reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even
\nPain is the ransom we pay for the smallest foretaste of heaven.
\nIgnorance darkens, death and inconscience gape to absorb us;
\nThick and persistent the Night confronts us, its hunger enormous
\nSwallowing our work and our lives. Our love and our knowledge squandered
\nLie like a treasure refused and trod down on the ways where we wandered;
\nAll we have done is effaced by the thousands behind us arriving.
\nTrapped in a round fixed for ever circles our thought and our living.
\nFiercely the gods in their jealousy strike down the heads that have
\n                                                                                        
\nneighboured
\nEven for a moment their skies; in the sands our achievements are gravured.
\nYet survives bliss in the rhythm of our heart-beats, yet is there wonder,
\nBeauty’s immortal delight, and the seals of the mystery sunder.
\nHonied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
\nMoonlight, the voices of streams; with a hundred marvellous faces
\nAlways he lures us to love him, always he draws us to pleasure
\nLeaving remembrance and anguish behind for our only treasure.
\nPassionate we seek for him everywhere, yearn for some sign of him, calling,
\nScanning the dust for his foot-prints, praying and stumbling and falling;
\nNothing is found and no answer comes from the masks that are passing.
\nMemories linger, lines from the past like a half-faded tracing.
\nHe has passed on into silence wearing his luminous mantle.
\nOut of the melodied distance a laugh rings pure-toned, infantile,<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-530<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nSole
\nreminder that he is, last signal recalling his presence.
\nThere is a joy behind suffering; pain digs our road t.o his pleasance.
\nAll things have bliss for their secret; only our consciousness falters
\nFearing to offer itself as a victim on ecstasy’s altars.
\nIs not the world his disguise? when that cloak is tossed back from his
\n                                                                                                    
\nshoulders,
\nBeauty looks out like a sun on the hearts of the ravished beholders.
\nMortals, your end is beatitude, rapture eternal his meaning:
\nJoy, which he most now denies, is his purpose: the hedges, the screening
\nWere but the rules of his play; his denials came to lure farther.
\nThese too were magic of Maya, smiles of the marvellous Mother.
\nOh, but the cruelty! oh, but the empty pain we go rueing!
\nEdges of opposite sweetness, calls to a closer pursuing.
\nAll that we meet is a symbol and gateway; cryptic intention
\nLurks in a common appearance, smiles from a casual mention:
\nOpposites hide in each other; in the laughter of Nature is danger,
\nGlory and greatness their embryos form in the womb of her anger.
\nWhy are we terrified? wherefore cry out and draw back from the smiting-
\nBlows from the hands of a lover to direr exactions exciting,
\nFiery points of his play! Was he Rudra only, the mighty?
\nWhose were the whispers of sweetness, whose were the murmurs of pity?
\nSomething opposes our grasp on the light and the sweetness and power,
\nSomething within us, something without us, trap-door or tower,
\nNature’s gap in our being – or hinge. That device could we vanquish,
\nOnce could we clasp him and hold, his joy we could never relinquish.
\nThen we could not be denied, for our might would be single and flawless.
\nSons of the Eternal, sovereigns of Nature absolute and lawless,
\nTermlessly our souls would possess as he now enjoys and possesses,
\nTermlessly probe the delight of his laughter’s lurking recesses,
\nChasing its trail to the apex of sweetness and secrecy. Treasured
\nClose to the beats of Eternity’s heart in a greatness unmeasured,
\nLocked into a miracle and mystery of Light we would live in him, – seated
\nDeep in his core of beatitude ceaselessly by Nature repeated,
\nCareless of Time, with no fear of an end, with no need for endeavour
\nCaught by his ecstasy dwell in a rapture enduring for ever.
\nWhat was the garden he built when the stars were first set in their places,
\nSoul and Nature together mid streams and in cloudless spaces
\nNaked and innocent? Someone offered a fruit of derision,
\nKnowledge of good and of evil, cleaving in God a division.
\nThough he who made all said, "It is good, I have fashioned
\nperfection,"<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-531<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n"No,
\nthere is evil," someone whispered, "’tis screened fram detectian."
\nWisest he of the beasts af the field, one cunning and creeping;
\n"See it," he said, "be wise; yau shall be as the gads are,
\nunsleeping,
\nThey who know all." And they ate. The roots of our being were shaken;
\nHatred and weeping and wrath at once trampled a world overtaken,
\nTerror and fleeing and anguish and shame and desires unsated;
\nCruelty stalked like a lion; Revenge and her braad were created.
\nOut to the desert he drove the rebellious. Flaming behind them
\nStreamed out the sword of his wrath and it followed leaping to find them,
\nStabbing at randam. The pure and the evil, the strang and the tempted,
\nAll are confounded in punishment; justly is no one exempted.
\nVirtuous? yes, there are many, but who. is there innocent? Toiling
\nTherefore we seek, but find nat that Eden. Planting and spoiling,
\n"This is the garden," we say, "lo, the trees and this is the
\nriver."
\nVainly redeemers came, not one has availed to deliver.
\nNever can Nature go back to her careless and childlike beginning,
\nLaugh of the babe and the song of the wheel in its delicate spinning,
\nSmile of the sun upon flowers and earth’s beauty, life without labour
\nPlucking the fruits af the soil and rejoicing in cottage and arbour.
\nOnce we have chosen to be as the gods, we must follow that motion.
\nKnowledge must graw in us, might like a Titan’s, bliss like an ocean,
\nCalmness and purity born of the spirit’s gaze on the Real,
\nRapture of his oneness embracing the soul in a clasp hymeneal.
\nWas it not he once in Brindavan? Woods divine to our yearning,
\nMemorable always! 0 flowers, 0 delight on the tree-tops burning,
\nGrasses his herds have grazed and crushed by his feet in the dancing,
\nYamuna flowing with song, through the greenness always advancing,
\nYou unforgotten remind; for his flute with its sweetness ensnaring
\nSounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
\nHales us out naked and absolute, out to his woodlands eternal,
\nOut to his moonlit dances, his dalliance sweet and supernal,
\nAnd we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled to his dreadful embraces,
\nSlaves of his rapture to Brindavan crowded with amorous faces,
\nLuminous kine in the green glades seated, soft-eyed gazing,
\nFlowers on the branches distressing us, moonbeams uneatthly amazing,
\nYamuna flowing before us, laughing low with her voices,
\n‘Brindavan arching a’er us where Shyfma sparts and rejoices.
\nInly the miracle trembles repeated; mist-walls are broken
\nHiding that country of God and we look on the wonderful token,
\nClasp the beautiful body of the Eternal; his flute-call of yearning<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-532<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nCries
\nin our breast with its blissful anguish for ever returning;
\nLife flows past us with passionate voices, a heavenly river,
\nAll our being goes back as a bride of his bliss to the Giver.
\nEven an hour of the soul can unveil the Unborn, the Everlasting,
\nGaze on its mighty Companion; the load of mortality casting,
\nMind hushes stilled in eternity; waves of the Infinite wander
\nThrilling body and soul and its endless felicity squander;
\nAll world-sorrow is finished, the cry of the parting is over;
\nEcstasy laughs in our veins, in our heart is the heart of the Lover.
\nAs when a stream from a highland plateau green mid the mountains
\nDraws through broad lakes of delight the gracious sweep of its fountains,
\nLife from its heaven of desire comes down to the toil of the earthways;
\nStreaming through mire it pours still the mystical joy of its birthplace,
\nGreen of its banks and the green of its trees and the hues of the flower.
\nSomething of chiid-heart beauty, something of greatness and power,
\nDwell with it still in its early torrent laughter and brightness,
\nCall in the youth of its floods and the voice of the wideness and whiteness.
\nBut in its course are set darkness and fall and the spirit’s ordeal.
\nHating its narrowness, forced by an ardour to see all and be all,
\nDashed on the inconscient rocks and straining through mud, over gravel,
\nFlows, like an ardent prisoner bound to the scenes of his travail,
\nLife, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow
\nIf by her heart’s toil a loan-light of joy from the heavens she can borrow.
\nOut of the sun-rays and moon-rays, the winds’ wing-glimmer and revel,
\nOut of the star-fields of wonder, down to earth’s danger and evil
\nHeadlong cast with a stridulant thunder, the doom-ways descending,
\nShuddering below into sunless depths, across chasms unending,
\nBaulked of the might of its waters, a thread in a mountainous vastness,
\nParcelled and scanted it hurries as of storming a Titan fastness,
\nCarving the hills with a sullen and lonely gigantic labour.
\nHurled into strangling ravines it escapes with a leap and a quaver,
\nBreaks from the channels of hiding it grooves out and chisels and twistens,
\nAngry, afraid, white, foaming. A stony and monstrous resistance
\nMeets it piling up stubborn limits. Afllicted the river
\nTreasures a scattered sunbeam, moans for a god to deliver,
\nLonging to lapse through the plain’s green felicity, yearning to widen
\nJoined to the ocean’s shoreless eternity far-off and hidden.
\nHigh on the cliffs the Great Ones are watching, the Mighty and Deathless,
\nSoaring and plunging the roadway of the Gods climbs uplifted and breathless;
\nEver we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us,<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-533<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nLuminous
\nbeckoning hands in the distance invite and implore us.
\nIgnorant, circled with death and the abyss, we have dreamed of a human
\nParadise made from the mind of a man, from the heart of a woman,
\nDreamed of the Isles offhe Blest in a light of perpetual summer,
\nDreamed of the joy of an earthly life with no pain for incomer.
\nNever, we said, can these waters from heaven be lost in the marshes,
\nCease in the sands of the desert, die where the simoom parches;
\nPlains are beyond, there are hamlets and fields where the river rejoices
\nPacing once more with a quiet step and with amical voices:
\nBright amid woodlands red with the berries and cool with the breezes
\nGlimmer the leaves; all night long the heart of the nightingale eases
\nSweetly its burden of pity, and sorrow. There amid flowers
\nWe shall take pleasure in arbours delightful, lengthening the hours,
\nTime for our servitor waiting our fancy through moments unhasting,
\nUnder the cloudless blue of those skies of tranquillity resting,
\nLying on beds of lilies, hearing the bells of the cattle
\nTinkle, and drink red wine of life and go forth to the battle,
\nFight and unwounded return to our beautiful home by the waters,
\nFruit of our joy rear tall strong sons and radiant daughters.
\nThen shall the Virgins of Light come down to us clad in clear raiment
\nWoven from sunbeam and moonbeam and lightnings, limitless payment
\nBring of our toil and our sorrow, carrying life-giving garlands
\nPlucked by the fountains of Paradise, bring from imperishable star-lands
\nHymn-words of wisdom, visions of beauty, heaven-fruit ruddy,
\nWine-cups of ecstasy sending the soul like a stream through the body.
\nFate shall not know; if her spies come down to our beautiful valley,
\nThey shall grow drunk with its grapes and wander in woodland and alley.
\nThere leaps the anger of Rudra? there will his lightnings immortal
\nCircle around with their red eye of cruelty stabbing the portal?
\nFearless is there life’s play; I shall sport with my dove from his highlands,
\nDrinking her laughter of bliss like a god in my Grecian islands.
\nLife in my limbs shall grow deathless, flesh with the God-glory tingle,
\nLustre of Paradise, light of the earth-ways marry and mingle.
\nThese are but dreams and the truth shall be greater. Heaven made woman!
\nFlower of beatitude! living shape of the bliss of the Brahman!
\nArt thou not she who shall bring into life and time the Eternal?
\nBody of the summer of the Gods, a sweetness virginal, vernal,
\nBreathes from thy soul into Nature; Love sits dreaming in thy bosom,
\nWisdom gazes from thy eyes, thy breasts of God-rapture are the blossom.
\nIf but the joy of thy feet once could touch out spaces smiting<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-534<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nEarth
\nwith a ray from the Unknown, on the world’s heart heaven’s script
\n                                                                                                
\nwriting,
\nAll then would change into harmony and beauty, Time’s doors shudder
\nSwinging wide on their hinges into Eternity, other
\nVoices than earth’s would be fire in our speech and make deathless our
\n                                                                                             
\nthinking.
\nOne who is hidden in Light would grow visible, multitudes linking,
\nLyres of a single ecstasy, throbs of the one heart beating,
\nWonderful bodies and souls in the spirit’s identity meeting
\nEveh as stars in sky-vastness know their kindred in grandeur.
\nYet may it be that although in the hands of our destiny stands sure
\nFixed to its hour the Decree of the Advent, still it is fated
\nOnly when kindling earth’s bodies a mightier Soul is created.
\nFar-off the gold and the greatness, the rapture too splendid and dire.
\nAre not the ages too young? too low in our hearts burns the fire.
\nBringest thou only a gleam on the summits, a cry in the distance,
\nSeen by the eyes that are wakened, heard by a spirit that listens?
\nForm of the formless All-Beautiful, lodestar of Nature’s aspirance,
\nMusic of prelude giving a voice to the ineffable Silence,
\nFirst white dawn of the God-Light cast on these creatures that perish,
\nWord-key of a divine and eternal truth for mortals to cherish,
\nCome! let thy sweetness and force be a breath in the breast of the future
\nMaking the god-ways alive, immortality’s golden-red suture:
\nDeep in our lives there shall work out a honeyed celestial leaven,
\nBliss shall grow native to being and earth be a kin-soil to heaven.
\nOpen the barriers of Time, the world with thy beauty enamour.
\nTrailing behind thee the purple of thy soul and the dawn-moment’s glamour,
\nForcing the heart of the Midnight where slumber and secrecy linger,
\nGuardians of mystery, touching her bosom with thy luminous finger,
\nDaughter of Heaven, break through to me moonlike, mystic and gleaming;
\nTread through the margins of twilight, cross over borders of dreaming.
\nVision delightful alone on the peaks whom the silences cover,
\nVision of bliss, stoop down to mortality, lean to thy lover.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAHANA<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nVoice
\nof the sensuous mortal, heart of eternal longing,
\nThou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses wronging!
\nBut I descend at last. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,
\nPoison and nectar one has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.
\nWe two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-535<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nSon
\nof man, thou hast crowned thy life with the flowers that are scentless,
\nChased the delights that wound. But I come and midnight shall sunder.
\nLo, I come, and behind me Knowledge descends and with thunder
\nFilling the spaces Strength, the Angel, bears on his bosom
\nJoy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child’s or a blossom,
\nInnocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing,
\nWhen thy desires I have seized and devoured like a lioness preying.
\nThou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me lured and forsaken:
\nI have a snare for his footsteps, I have a chain for him taken.
\nCome then to Brindavan, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
\nFollow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master.
\nFollow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting;
\nTrample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.
\nThen shalt thou know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
\nHear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to his finger,
\nBrindavan’s rustle shalt understand and Yamuna’s laughter,
\nTake thy place in the Ras1<\/font><\/sup>and thy share of the ecstasy after.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1<\/sup> The
\ndance-round of Krishna with the cowherdesses in the moonlit groves of Brindavan,
\ntype of the dance of Divine Delight with the souls of men liberated in the world
\nof Bliss secret within us.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-536<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

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AHANA   A poem in rhymed quantitative hexameters     Ahana (Ahana, the Dawn of God, descends on the world where amid the strife and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-05-collected-poems-volume-05","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}