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
Cool may you find the youngling grass, my herd, Cool with delicious dew, while I here dream And listen to the sweet and garrulous bird That matches its cool note with Thea's stream. Boon Zephyr now with waist ungirdled runs And you, O luminous nurslings, wider blow, O nurslings of light rain and vernal suns,
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When bounteous winds about the garden go. Apt to my soul art thou, blithe honeyed moon, O lovely mother of the rose-red June. Zephyr that all things soothes, enhances all, Dwells with thee softly, the near cuckoo drawn To farther groves with sweet inviting call And dewy buds upon the blossoming lawn. But ah, today some happy soft unrest Aspires and pants in my unquiet breast, As if some light were from the day withdrawn, As if the flitting Zephyr knew a lovelier word Than it had spoken yet, and flower and bird Kept still some grace that yet is left to bloom, Had still a note I never yet have heard, That, blossoming, would the wide air more illume, That, spoken, would advance the sweet Spring's bounds With large serener lights and joy of exquisite sounds.
Nor have I any in whose ears to tell This gracious grief and so by words have peace, Save the cold hyacinth in the breezy dell And the sweet cuckoo in the sunlit trees Since the sharp autumn days when with increase Of rosy-lighted cheeks attained the ground Weary of waiting and by wasps hung round The bough's fair hangings and Thea fell with these, My mother, with twelve matron summers crowned. Four times since then the visits of green spring Have blessed the hillsides with fresh blossoming And four times has the winter chilled the brooks, Since sole I dwell with my rude father cheered By no low-worded speech or sunny looks. Yet are we rich enough, fruitful our herd And yields us brimming pails, and store we still Numberless baskets with white cheese and fill Our cave with fruits for winter, and since wide-feared My father Sinnis, none have care our wealth to spoil.
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Therefore I pass sweet days with easy toil, Nor other care have much but milk the kine And call them out to graze in soft sunshine And stall them when the evening-star grows large. All else is pleasure, budded wreaths to twine And please my soul beside my horned charge And bathe in the delicious brook that speeds, Iris and water-lily capped and green with reeds.
Nor need we flocks for clothing nor the shears; For when the echoes in the mountain rocks Mimic the groaning wain that moving peers Between thick trees or under granite blocks, Our needs my father takes, nor any yet Scaped him who breaks the wrestler as these twines Of bloom I break, so he with little sweat, And tears the women with dividing pines. Therefore thin gleaming robes and ruddy wines We garner, flickering swords in jewelled case And burning jewels and the beautiful gold Whereof bright plenty now our caverns hold And ornaments of utter exquisiteness. But if these brilliants of their pleasure fail, The lily blooms from vale to scented vale And crocus lifts in Spring its golden fire. Our midnight hears the warbling nightingale, The cuckoo calls as he would never tire; Along our hills we pluck the purple grapes, And in the night a million stars arise To watch us with their ancient friendly eyes. Such flowering ease I have and earth's sweet shapes, And riches, and the green and hived springs. Ah then what longing wakes for new and lovelier things.
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