A poem by Sri Aurobindo
Notes on the metres of the poems and their significance drawn from the letters of Sri Aurobindo
These two poems are in the nature of metrical experiments. The first is a kind of compromise between the stress system and the foot measure. The stanza is of four lines, alternately of twelve and ten stresses. The second and fourth line in each stanza can be read as a ten-foot line of mixed iambs and anapaests, the first and third, though a similar system subject to replacement of afoot anywhere by a single-syllable half-foot could be applied, are still mainly readable by stresses.
The other poem is an experiment in the use of quantitative foot measures not following any existing model, but freely invented. It is a four-line stanza reading alternately
and
It could indeed be read otherwise, in several ways, but read in the ordinary way of accentual feet it would lose all lyrical quality and the soul of its rhythm.
The Bird of Fire is the living vehicle of the gold fire of the Divine Light and the white fire of the Divine Tapas and the crimson fire of Divine Love—and everything else of the Divine Consciousness.
CWSA > Collected Poems > Six Poems (1934) - Note
Does the line
Late and slow you have come from the timeless Angel
mean that the sadhaka struggled long before the attainment? Does the "timeless Angel" mean the transcendent?
There must be a mistake in the copy. There is a full stop at "timeless". "Angel" begins a new sentence and is addressed to the bird. It is the Bird who went out to reach the Timeless Divine and comes late (while the Sadhak and the world have been long struggling and waiting in vain) with the gift.
Purani thinks that the "Bird of Fire" represents aspiration. Is this true?
No—the Bird is not merely aspiration.
Is the "Dancer in Time" Nataraja?
Yes.
The "flame-petalled love" you mention in one of the lines is, I think, possible only at some level near the Supermind.
It is possible in the psychic also.
The phrase "arrives at its luminous term thy flight" means, I suppose, the complete descent into the material consciousness after breaking the barriers of mind and life.
No. It reaches the Eternal and brings back to the material world that which is beyond Mind and Life.
25 October 1933
The Dancer is not the Time-Spirit, but the Divine in Time.
1933
The flame means the Bird of Flame and the Bird is the symbol of an inner Power that rises from the "sacrifice" i.e. the Yoga. The last lines mean that it has the power of going beyond mind and life to that which is beyond mind and life.
2 December 1933
Is The Bird of Fire more of a compromise between a quantitative
Page 250
and a purely stress scansion than In Horis Aeternum (where the quantity-aspect seems to be less important than in The Bird of Fire)?
In the In Horis Aeternum I did not follow any regular scheme of quantities, letting them come as was needed by the rhythm. In The Bird of Fire I started with the idea of a quantitative element but abandoned it and remodelled the part of the poem in which I had used the quantitative system.
Letters on Poetry and Art > On Some Poems Written during the 1930s
Gold-white wings a-throb in the vastness, the bird of flame went glimmering over a sunfire curve to the haze of the west, Skimming, a messenger sail, the sapphire-summer waste of a soundless wayless burning sea. Now in the eve of the waning world the colour and splendour returning drift through a blue-flicker air back to my breast, Flame and shimmer staining the rapture-white foam-vest of the waters of Eternity.
Gold-white wings of the miraculous bird of fire, late and slow have you come from the Timeless. Angel, here unto me Bringst thou for travailing earth a spirit silent and free or His crimson passion of love divine,— White-ray-jar of the spuming rose-red wine drawn from the vats brimming with light-blaze, the vats of ecstasy, Pressed by the sudden and violent feet of the Dancer in Time from his sun-grape fruit of a deathless vine?
White-rose-altar the eternal Silence built, make now my nature wide, an intimate guest of His solitude, But golden above it the body of One in her diamond sphere with Her halo of star-bloom and passion-ray! Rich and red is thy breast, O bird, like blood of a soul climbing the hard crag-teeth world, wounded and nude, A ruby of flame-petalled love in the silver-gold altar-vase of moon-edged night and rising day.
O Flame who art Time's last boon of the sacrifice, offering-flower held by the finite's gods to the Infinite, O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred lids that look beyond all space, One strange leap of thy mystic stress breaking the barriers of mind and life, arrives at its luminous term thy flight; Invading the secret clasp of the Silence and crimson Fire thou frontest eyes in a timeless Face.
Gold-white wings a throb in the vastness, the bird of flame went glimmering over a sunfire curve to the haze of the west, Skimming, a messenger sail, the sapphire-summer waste of a soundless wayless burning sea. Now in the eve of the waning world the colour and splendour returning drift through a blue-flicker air back to my breast, Flame and shimmer staining the rapture-white foam-vest of the waters of Eternity.
White-rose-altar the eternal Silence built, make now my nature wide, an intimate guest of His solitude, But golden above it the body of One in Her diamond sphere with Her halo of star-bloom and passion-ray! Rich and red is thy breast, O bird, like blood of a soul climbing the hard crag-teeth world, wounded and nude, A ruby of flame-petalled love in the silver-gold altar-vase of moon-edged night and rising day.
Part VII : Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) > Six Poems
How to read the color-coded changes below? 1. SABCL version : lines with any changes & specific changes 2. CWSA version : lines with any changes & specific changes
NOTES FROM EDITOR
17 October 1933. No handwritten manuscripts of this poem survive. There are three typed manuscripts, two of which are dated 17 October 1933. In a letter written shortly afterwards, Sri Aurobindo said that “Bird of Fire” was “written on two consecutive days—and afterwards revised”. He also wrote that this poem and “Trance” (see below) were completed the same day.[^1][^1]: Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, volume 27 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 244.
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