All poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms.
Poems
This volume consists of all poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms. All such poems published by Sri Aurobindo during his lifetime are included here, as well as poems found among his manuscripts after his passing. Sri Aurobindo worked on these poems over the course of seven decades. The first one was published in 1883 when he was ten; a number of poems were written or revised more than sixty years later, in the late 1940s.
THEME/S
Prologue–Alnuman and the Peri
Canto I–The Story of Alnuman and the Emir's Daughter
Canto II–The Companions of Alnuman 1
Canto III–The Companions of Alnuman 2
Canto IV–The Companions of Alnuman 3
Canto V–The First Quest of the Sapphire Crown
Canto VI–The Quest of the Golden snake
Canto VII–The Quest of the Marble Queen
Canto VIII–The Quest of the Snowbird
Canto IX–The Second Quest of the Sapphire Crown
Canto X–The Journey of the Green Oasis
Canto XI–The Journey of the Irremeable Ocean
Canto XII–The Journey of the Land without Pity
Epilogue–The Arabian and the Caliph
Alnuman and the Peri
In Bagdad by Euphrates, Asia's river, Euphrates that through deserts must deliver The voices which of human daybreaks are Into the dim mysterious surge afar, The Arabian dwelt; after long travel he. Regions deserted, wastes of silent sea, Wide Ocean ignorant of ships and lands Never made glad by toil of mortal hands For he had seen, the Indian mountains bare Save of hard snow and the unbreathed huge air And swum through giant waters and had heard In those unhuman forests beast and bird, The peacock's cry and tiger's hoarse appeal Calling to God for prey, marked the vast wheel Of monstrous birds shadowing whole countries; he From Singhal through the long infinity Of southern floods had steered his shuddering ship Where unknown winds their lonely tumult keep. And he had lived with strong and pitiless men, Nations unhumanized by joy and pain, And he had tasted grain not sown by man And drunk strange milk in weird Mazinderan. Silent he was, as one whom thoughts attend, Distant, whom stiller hearts than ours befriend. He lived with memories only; no sweet voice Made the mute echoes of his life rejoice; No lovely face of children brought the dawn Into his home; but silent, calm, withdrawn, He watched the ways of men with godlike eyes Released from trammelling affinities. Yet was he young and many women strove Vainly to win his marble mind to love. One day when wind had fled to the cool north And the strong earth was blind with summer, forth
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The Arabian rode from great Bagdad and turned Into the desert. All around him burned The imprisoned spirit of fire; above his head The sky was like a tyranny outspread, The sun a fire in those heavens, and fire The sands beneath; the air burning desire And breathless, a plumb weight of flame; yet rode The Arabian unfeeling like a god. Three hours he rode and now no more was seen Bagdad, the imperial city, nor aught green, But the illimitable sands around Extend, a silent world waiting for sound, When in the distance he descried a grace Of motion beautiful in that dead place. Wondering he turned, but suddenly the horse Pricked up his slender ears, swerved from the course And pawing stood the unwilling air, nor heard The guiding voice nor the familiar word. Whinnying with wrath he smote the desert sand And mocked the rein and raged at the command. Then raised the man his face and saw above No cloud with the stark face of heaven strove, A single blaze of light from pole to pole. Smiling the Arabian spoke unto his soul. "Here too then are you strong, O influences That trouble the earth and air and the strong seas! Therefore I will not stay your gathering wings Who watch me from the air, you living things, But go to find whatever peril or wonder Wait me of life above the earth or under. Strange will it be if quiet Bagdad yield More terror or more sweetness than in field Has stayed me yet or in untravelled flood Or mountain or the tiger-throated wood." So saying he grasped the strong and shaken mane And set swift footing on the fiery plain. At once the beast as if by sorcery
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Strangely compelled, calmed his impetuous eye; His angry tremor ceased and bounding wrath Following unbidden in the Arabian's path. But he with silent toil the sands untried Vanquishing through that luminous world and wide Went a slow shadow, till his feet untired The fruit of all his labour long acquired. Before a mile complete he was aware Of a strange shape of beauty sitting there On a sole boulder in the level wild, Maiden, a marvellous bloom, a naked child; All like a lily from her leaves escaped The golden summer kissed her close and wrapped In soft revealing sunshine,—a sweet bareness, A creature made of flowers and choicest fairness; And all her limbs were like a luminous dream, So wonderfully white they burn and gleam, Her shoulder ivory richly bathed in gold, Her sides a snowy wonder to behold, Marble made amorous; her body fair Seemed one with the divine, translucent air, A light within the light, a glorious treasure, A thing to hold, to kiss, to slay with pleasure. This girl was not alone, but with her watched Two shapes of beauty and of terror hatched, A strong, fierce snake, round her sweet middle twined, A tigress at her lovely feet reclined. Dreaming on those tremendous sands she waited And often with that splendour miscreated Played thoughtfully, about her wondrous knees Binding the brilliant death or would increase The whiteness of her limbs with its fierce hues Or twine it in her tresses flowing loose. Below that other restless evil played, The fierce, sleek terror on the sands outspread. First of the wonderful three rose with a bound Waking the desert from its sleep with sound
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The tigress, but the Arabian strode more near As one who had forgotten how to fear And frowning like a god with kingly look He threatened the preparing death and shook His javelin in the sun. Back crouched the fiend Amazed nor could the steely light attend Nor that unconquerable glance; yet lowered To find her dreadful violence overpowered By any smaller thing than death; and he Heeded no more crouched limb nor stealthy eye. He on that flowerlike shape a moment gazed As one by strange felicity amazed, Who long grown sorrow's friend his whole life grieves, Blest beyond expectation, scarce believes That joy is in his heart—so gazed, so laid At last upon the white and gleaming maid The question of his hands. O soft and real The nakedness he grasped, no marble ideal Born of the blazing light and infinite air, A breathing woman with lovely limbs and bare. Then with a strong melodious voice he cried And all his cheek was flushed with royal pride. "Thou then art mine, after long labour mine, O earthly body and O soul divine, After long labour and thy sounding home Hast left and caverns where thy sisters roam, O dweller where the austral tempest raves! O daughter of the wild and beautiful waves! Ah breasts of beauty! Ah delicious shoulder! Leading from bliss to bliss the hands that hold her, At length I grasp you then and snared at length The ivory swiftness of thy feet and strength Of this immortal body shaped for kings, O memory of sweet and dreadful things! Ah welcome to the streets that human tread Makes musical and joy of human bread Broken between dry hands and to the sight
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Of the untroubled narrow rivers, light Of lamps and warmth of kindled fires and man. Fairer shall be thy feet on greensward than On ocean rocks and O! more bright thy beauty For human passion and for womanly duty And softer in my bosom shalt thou sleep Than lulled by the sublime and monstrous deep. Much have I laboured; the resplendent face Of summer I have hated, as the days Went by and no delightful brook was found Sprinkling with earth's cool love the ruthless ground, And in my throat there was a desert's thirst And on my tongue a fire: I have cursed The spring and all its flowers: the wrathful cry Of the wild waters and their cruelty I have endured, labouring with sail and oar Through the mad tempest for some human shore And fought with winds, and seen vast Hell aflame Down in the nether flood till I became Blind with the sight of those abysmal graves And deaf with the eternal sound of waves And all my heart was broken alone to be Day after day with the unending sea. And much on land I have laboured without moan Or weakening tears making my heart a stone. But thou art come and I shall hear no more By inexorable rocks the Ocean roar, Nor pine in dungeons far from pity or aid. But in far other prison, seaborn maid, Thy limbs shall minister to my delight Even as an ordinary woman's might. And I shall hear thy voice around my heart Like a cool rivulet and shall not start To see thee ivory gleaming and all night Shall feel thee in my arms, O darling white— With afterjoys that spring from these; the face Of childish loveliness shall light my days,
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About my doors the feet of children tread And little heads with jonquils garlanded, That often to sweetness win war-hardened eyes And hearts grown iron their soft masteries Compel and the light touch of little hands Bend sworded fingers to their sweet commands. O bright felicity, labour's dear end, Into my arms, into my heart descend." So as he spoke, the silent desert air Lived with his gladness, and the maiden there Listened with downcast lids and a soft flush Upon her like the coming of a blush. But when he finished and the air was mute, She laughed with happy lips most like a flute Or voice of cuckoo in an Indian grove Waking the heart to vague delightful love. And with divine eyes gleaming where strange mirth A smiling mischief was, the living girth Of her delicious waist she suddenly Unbound and by the middle lifting high Betwixt them shook. Hissed the fierce snake and raised Its jewelled hood for spotted radiance praised, Its jewelled hood to the dread leap distended: Sad limit of noble life, had that descended Since short his breath and evil, who that pang Experienced; but before the serpent sprang, Wrathful, the Arabian seized the glittering neck And twines of bronze burning with many a fleck Of coloured fire. His angry grasp to quell Vainly the formidable folds rebel: Not all that gordian force and slippery strength Of coils availed. Inanimate at length, The immense destroyer on the Arabian's wrist Hung in a ruin loose; and to resist His wrath of love none now might intervene, Nor she deny him. Yet with tranquil mien Smiling she sat and swept with noble gesture
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Her hair back that had fallen a purple investure Over her glowing grace. Strong arms he cast Around her naked loveliness and fast Showered kisses on her limbs whose marble white Grew woman with a soft and rosy light In each kissed place. "Deemedst thou then," he cried, "Bright fugitive, lovely wanderer with the tide, By shaking death before death-practised eyes My crown to wrest of strenuous enterprise, Thyself, thyself and beauty? O too sweet To touch our hard earth with thy faultless feet! Yet on hard earth must dwell. For with the ground Thy dreadful guardians who have fenced thee round Are equalled, and thyself, sweet, though thou shame The winds with swiftness or like mounting flame Strive all thy days in my imprisoning arms, Couldst burn thyself no exit. With alarms Menace and shapes of death; call on the flood For thy deliverance on these sands to intrude And lead thee to its jealous waters rude; But hands that have flung back the swallowing sea Shall stay and chastise and habituate thee To service due." He said and with the words The power in his soul increased, as birds With sounds encourage love and like great waves Exulting, rose against the breasts he craves, So he engrossed the lovely limbs. Then grasping Her fair soft arm in one hand, the other clasping Her smooth desired thighs, from that rude seat, The grey sun-blistered boulder most unmeet To bear her snowwhite radiance, lifted. She As to his horse he bore her mightily, A little strove in his strong arms, but round Her lithe, reluctant limbs closer he bound His despot hands and on the saddle set Never with such sweet rider burdened yet. Then to his seat he sprang and musical
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His cry in that vast silence, wherewithal He urged his horse, which delicately went Arching its neck with joy and proud content. Great were the Arabian's labours; many seas He had passed and borne impossible miseries And battled with impracticable ills O'er uncrossed rivers and forbidden hills, Till nature fainted. Yet too little was this To merit all the heaven now made his. For she, earth's wonder hard to grasp as fire, She whom all ocean's secret depths admire, Laid her delicious cheek to his and flung Sweet, bare arms on his neck and round him clung: Her snowy side was of his being a part; Her naked breast burdened his throbbing heart, And all her hair streamed over him and the whiteness Of her was in his eyes and her soft brightness A joy beneath his hands, to his embrace And he was clothed with her as in a dress. Round them the strong recovered coils were rolled Of the great snake and with imperious fold Compelled their limbs together, and by their side Pacing the tigress checked her dangerous stride. So rode they like a vision. All the time She murmured accents as of linked rhyme Musical, in a language like the sea, Accents of undulating melody. For sometimes it was like a happy noon Murmuring with waves and sometimes like the swoon Of calm, a silence heard, or rich by noise Of rivers pouring with their seaward voice And leaping laughters and sometimes was wild And passionate as the sobbing of a child. But often it was like the cold salt spray On a health-reddened cheek and glad with day And life and sad with the far-moaning call Of wind upon the waters funeral.
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Not on the lips of man might fashioned be A language of such wild variety. Now of that magic tongue no separate word Was of Alnuman understood nor heard, And yet he knew that of the caves she spoke Where never earthly light of sunshine woke, And of unfathomed things beneath the floods And peopled depths and Ocean solitudes And mighty creatures of the main and light Of jewels making a subluminous night Lower than even the dead may sink; and walls Of coral and in what majestic halls The naked seaborn sisters link their dance; How sometimes on the shores their white limbs glance In the mysterious moonlight; how they come To river-banks far from their secret home; And last she spoke of mighty Love that reaches Resistless arms beyond the long sea-beaches And mocks the barriers of the storm, and how Pearls unattainable a human brow Have decked and man, the child of misery, Been mated with the sisters of the sea. So on she murmured like a ceaseless song Making the weary sands a rapture; long The patient desert round them waits; nor soon The sun toiled through the endless afternoon: But they paced always like a marvellous dream, And dreamlike in the eyes of man might seem Such magic vision (had human eyes been found In the sole desert void of sign or bound),— The horse that feared its dread companion not; The kingly man with brow of reaching thought And danger-hardened strength; fair as the morn, The radiant girl upon his saddle borne, Naked, a vision not of earth; the fell Serpent that twined about them, terrible With burning hues; and the fierce tigress there
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Following with noiseless step the godlike pair. Nor when to Bagdad and its streets they came, Did any eye behold. Only a name Was in the ears of the grim warders. Straight Like engines blind of some o'ermastering fate They rose, the mighty bolts they drew: loud jarred The doors unhearing with deaf iron barred And groaned upon their road; then backward swung Whirling and kissed again with clamorous tongue. Nor in the streets was any step of man, Before loud wheels no swift torchbearers ran Setting the night on fire; bright and rare The garlanded highshuttered windows, where Men revelled and sound into the shadows cast: All else was night and silence where they passed. So is the beautiful sea stranger gone To her new home, who now no more must run Upon the bounding waves nor feel the sun On wind-blown limbs, destined a mortal's bride. So is the strong Arabian deified In bliss. Moreover from the wondrous night When with those small beloved feet grew bright His lonely house, wealth like a sea swept through Its doors and as a dwelling of gods it grew In beauty and in brightness. All that thrives Costly or fragrant upon earth or lives Of riches in the hoarding ocean lost And all bright things with gold or gems embossed By Indian or by Syrian art refined And all rich cloths and silks with jewels lined Regal Bokhara weaves or Samarcand, Increased and gathered to Alnuman's hand And girls of glorious limb and feature he Bought for his slaves, of rose and ivory, Sweet Persians with the honey-hiding mouth And passionate Arab girls and strong-limbed youth Of Tartar maidens for his harem doors.
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For now not vainly the fair child implores Of Shaikh or of Emir his love for boon, But with high marriage-rites some prosperous moon At last has brought into the marble pride Of that great house for envy edified. So in Bagdad the Arabian dwelt nor seemed Other his life than theirs who never dreamed Beyond earth's ken, nor made in sun and breeze Their spirits great with shock of the strong seas, Nor fortified their hearts with pains sublime Nor wrestled with the bounds of space and time. Like common men he lived to whom the ray Of a new sun but brings another day Unmeaning, who in their own selves confined Know not the grandeur which the mightier mind Inherits when it makes the destinies rude The chisel by which its marble mass and crude With God's or hero's likeness is indued. Yet this was also rumoured that within The sheath of that calm life he sojourned in An edge of flaming rapture was, that things Beyond all transitory imaginings Came to him secret and vast pleasures more Than frail humanity had dared to feel before. Since too much joy man's heart can hardly bear And all too weak man's narrow senses were For raptures that eternal spirits attain In sensuous heavens ignorant of pain. Yet even such raptures mortal man's could be Wed with the child of the unbounded sea.
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The Story of Almaimun* and the Emir's Daughter
* Name changed in MS. on this page.
Now in great Bagdad of the Abbasside The wanderer rests, to peace at last allied, Whom storm so long had tossed to storm; and grace Of love dwelt with him and the nobleness Of hearts made golden by felicity, Which is earth's preferable alchemy. For other is from pain the metal wrought, Anguish and wrestling in the coils of thought. These strengthen, these the mind as marble hard Make and as marble pure, which has not feared To scourge itself with insight; but the stress Of joy heightened to self-forgetfulness Is sweeter and to sweeter uses tends. With such felicity were crowned the friends And lovers of Almaimun and increase In the glad strength that grows from boundless peace. And each as to her orb the sunflower burns His spirit to his spirit's image turns. Such puissance great well-poisèd natures prove To mould to their own likeness all they love. But where is she who lit his doubtful morn, Whose sweet imagined shape each hour new-born Brightened but to illumine, kindled each Stray look with godhead and her daily speech A far ethereal music made, for whom He sought the wild waves and the peopled gloom Of the unseen? Must only she make moan? She in the crowded chambers is alone And closes eyes kept dry by anguished pride To wake in tears that hardly will be dried. Happy the heart and more than earthly blest That for those hands was meant where 'tis possessed,
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That to no alien house at the end has come But winging goes as to its natural home. The evening bird with no more simple flight Reaches its one unfailing nest at night. The heart which Fate not always here perverse With the one possible home out of an universe, Makes simply happy there secure shall dwell, Feeling that to be there is only well. And equal happy whether queenly chair Her portion or she kneel loose-girdled there And serve him as a slave. Alike 'tis heaven, Rule or obedience to the one heart given. So did not bright Zuleikha deem when she The temple was of his idolatry. Impatient of divine subjection, all Love's wealth was to her grace imperial Purple and diadems and earth's noblest gift But vantage her disdainful pride to lift. She was an Emir's daughter and her sire Clothed her in jewels and sublime attire, From silver dishes fed and emerald And in a world of delicate air installed So that her nature with these costly things Being burdened raised in vain its heavenward wings. From Koraish and the Abbasside he drew His stern extraction. Yet what brighter grew About his formidable name accursed Was a white fire of riches and the thirst Of poor men gazing with a bitter stealth On that impossibility of wealth. "Abdullah the Emir," so men would say Drawing their rags about them, "has display Of gold and silver and the sunlight fades At noon in his wide treasury and the shades Of midnight are more luminous there than birth Of day upon the ordinary earth. He has rich garments, would the naked clothe
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From Bagdad to the sea, were he not loth: The leavings of his menials far exceed In Khorassan the labourer's sharpened need. And since by thee this fair display was planned, O God, yet from the beggar's outstretched hand He guards his boundless trust ignobly well, Just Lord, display to him the fires of Hell." And here another pressing from his eye His children's pining looks, made sad reply. "Richer his wealth than widest chambers hold, Not in the weary heaps of ingots told Entirely, nor the cloths Damascus yields, Nor what the seas give up, nor what the fields. He gathers ever with exhaustless hands: His camels heave across the endless sands. Through Balkh when to Caboul or Candahar The wains go groaning or the evening star Watches the pomp of the wide caravan Intend to provinces Arabian, Half is Abdullah the Emir's: and he Gets spices of the south and porphyry: His are the Chinese silks, the Indian work Saved hardly from the horsehooves of the Turk: From Balsora the ships that o'er the bar Reel into Ocean's grasp, Abdullah's are; Yemen's far ports are with his ventures full; Muscat transmits him horses, arms and wool. The desert rider hopes no richer prize To handle than Abdullah's merchandize; With joy the Malayan sea-robber hails His argosy and for his western sails The Moorish pirates all the horizon scan Upon the far Mediterranean. Yet though his losses make the desert great And Ocean a new treasury create From his sole rapine, yet untouched endure His riches by that vast expenditure.
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He takes but to increase his piles of gold, He gives but to recover hundredfold. Thereby the poor increase. Wherefore I trust, When Azrael shall smite his limbs to dust And he upon that dolorous bridge is led Which, lord and peasant, all must one day tread, The bitter sword that spans the nether hell, He may be evened with the infidel." And one might answer mid these wretched men Who quiet was from constancy to pain; "Curse him not either lest the Kazi find And God loose not the chains that he shall bind." For he indeed was mighty in the town, A man acceptable in his renown; The mullahs to his will interpreted Their books and the law's lightning from his head Glanced on the rash accuser; for his word Was Hédoya before the Kazi heard. But whence the fountain of his wealth might flow, Well did the sad and toiling peasant know. For he as governor in Khorassan Had held the balance betwixt man and man And justified his rule benevolent By rape and torture for their own good meant, The fallen rooftree and the broken door And rents wrung from the miserable poor. And now hemmed in with lustrous things and proud, Each day a pomp, each night with music loud, He blazed, however his eye a darkness cast And pleasure by his sense external passed. Yet joy he had over his gathered gold And in that one sweet maiden joy untold. Daughter of Noureddin the Barmecide Was she who bore this brightness, but when died Jaafar and all his house fell like a tower Loosened in the mutation of an hour, Abdullah found his foe an outlawed man,
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Proscribed, a heretic and Persian And slew him with the sword juridical Between his golden house and Allah's wall.
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