To a Hero-Worshipper - I

My life is then a wasted ereme,

    My song but idle wind

    Because you merely find

In all this woven wealth of rhyme

Harsh figures with harsh music wound,

The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,

A ruby carcanet of sound,

    A cloud of lovely words?

I am, you say, no magic rod,

    No cry oracular,

    No swart and ominous star,

No Sinai thunder voicing God.

I have no burden to my song,

No smouldering word instinct with fire,

No spell to chase triumphant wrong,

    No spirit-sweet desire.

Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear,

    Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain

    Nor Shelley’s lyric pain,

Nor Keats’, the poet without peer.

I by the Indian waters vast

Did glimpse the magic of the past,

And on the oaten pipe I play

Warped echoes of an earlier day.

To a Hero-Worshipper - II

My friend, when first my spirit woke,

    I trod the scented maze

    Of Fancy’s myriad ways,

I studied Nature like a book

Men rack for meanings: yet I find

No rubric in the scarlet rose,

No moral in the murmuring wind,

    No message in the snows.

For me the daisy shines a star,

    The crocus flames a spire,

    A horn of golden fire,

Narcissus glows a silver bar:

Cowslips, the golden breath of God,

I deem the poet’s heritage,

And lilies silvering the sod

    Breathe fragrance from his page.

No herald of the sun am I

    But in a moonlit vale

    A russet nightingale

Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,

Who pours like wine a gurgling note

Paining with sound his swarthy throat,

Who pours sweet song he recks not why

Nor hushes ever lest he die.

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Phaethon - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Ye weeping poplars by the shelvy slope

From murmurous lawns downdropping to the stream

On whom the dusk air like a sombre dream

Broods and a twilight ignorant of hope,

Say what compulsion drear has bid you seam

Your mossy sides with drop on eloquent drop

That in warm rillets from your eyes elope?

Is it for the too patient, sure decay

Pale-gilded Autumn, aesthete of the years,

A gorgeous death, a fading glory wears

That thus along its tufted, downy way

Creeps slothfully this ooze of amber tears,

And thus with tearful gusts your branches sway

Sighing a requiem to your emerald day?

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O Letter Dull and Cold - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

O letter dull and cold, how can she read

Gladly these lifeless lines, no fire that prove,

When others even their passionate hearts exceed

Caressing her sweet name with words of love?

O me that I could force this barrier, turn

My heart to syllables, make all desire

One burning word, then would my letters yearn

With some reflection of that hidden fire.

Ah if I could, what then? This fiery pit

Within for human eyes was never meant.

All hearts would view with horror or with hate

A picture not of earthly lineament.

Yourself even, sweet, would start with terror back

As at the hissing of a sudden snake.

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The Silver Call

There is a godhead of unrealised things

    To which Time’s splendid gains are hoarded dross;

A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings

    Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.

All eye has seen and all the ear has heard

    Is a pale illusion by some greater voice

And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,

    No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice

Can equal those diviner ecstasies.

    A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken

Of those yet unimagined harmonies,

    The fate and privilege of unborn men.

As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,

Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose.

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The Nightingale

Hark in the trees the low-voiced nightingale

Has slain the silence with a jubilant cry;

How clear in the hushed night, yet voluble

And various as sweet water wavering by,

    That murmurs in a channel small

    Beneath a low grey wall,

    Then sings amid the fitful rye.

    O sweet grave Siren of the night,

        Astarte’s eremite,

Thou feedest every leaf with solemn glee.

Lo, the night-winds sigh happier, being chid by thee.

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Song

O lady Venus, shine on me,

O rose-crowned goddess from thy seas

Radiant among the Cyclades!

Rose-crowned, puissant like the sea.

And bring thy Graces three,

The swift companions of thy mirthful mind.

Bring thy sweet rogue with thee,

Thy careless archer, beautiful and blind.

A woman’s royal heart

Bid him to wound and bind her who is free;

Bind her for me!

Nor for the sweet bright crimson blood may start

In little rillets from the little heart

Spare her thy sport to be,

Goddess, she spared not me.

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Epitaph

Moulded of twilight and the vesper star

Midnight in her with noon made quiet war;—

Moulded twixt life and death, Love came between;

Then the night fell; twilight faded, the star had been.

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Epigram

If thou wouldst traverse Time with vagrant feet

    Nor make the poles thy limit fill not then

Thy wallet with the fancy’s cloying sweet

    Which is no stay to heaven-aspiring men,

But follow wisdom since alone the wise

Can walk through fire with unblinking eyes.

A Thing Seen

She in her garden, near the high grey wall,

Sleeping; a silver-bodied birch-tree tall

That held its garments o’er her wide and green,

Building a parapet of shade between,

Forbade the amorous sun to look on her.

No fold of gracious raiment was astir.

The wind walked softly; silent moved a cloud

Listening; of all the tree no leaf was loud

But guarded a divine expectant hush

Thrilled by the silence of a hidden thrush.

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Thou didst Mistake

Thou didst mistake, thy spirit’s infant flight

Opening its lovely wings upon the sun

Paused o’er the first strong bloom that met thy sight

Thinking perhaps it was the only one.

But all this fragrant garden was beyond.

Winds came to thee with hints of honey; day

Disclosed a brighter hope than this unsunned

Thought-sheltered heart and called thee far away.

Thou didst mistake. Must I then rage, grow ill,

With tortured vanity and think it love,

Miscall with brutal names my lady’s will

Fouling thy snowwhite image, O my dove?

Is not thy kiss enough, though only one,

For all eternity to live upon?

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