CWSA Set of 37 volumes
Collected Poems Vol. 2 of CWSA 751 pages 2009 Edition
English
 PDF   

Editions

ABOUT

All poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms.

THEME

Collected Poems

  Poems

Sri Aurobindo symbol
Sri Aurobindo

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.

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA) Collected Poems Vol. 2 751 pages 2009 Edition
English
 PDF     Poems

The Lover's Complaint

O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;
    Unloose that heavenly tongue,
    Interpreter divine of pain;
Utter thy voice, the sister of my song.
Thee in the silver waters growing,
Arcadian Pan, strange whispers blowing
Into thy delicate stops, did teach
A language lovelier than speech.

Page 26

O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;
    O plaintive, murmuring reed.
    Nisa to Mopsus is decreed,
The moonwhite Nisa to a swarthy swain.
What love-gift now shall Hope not bring?
Election dwells no more with beauty's king.
The wild weed now has wed the rose,
Now ivy on the bramble grows;
Too happy lover, fill the lamp of bliss!
Too happy lover, drunk with Nisa's kiss!
For thee pale Cynthia leaves her golden car,
For thee from Tempe stoops the white and evening star.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain;
    O solace anguish yet again.
    I thought Love soft as velvet sleep,
Sweeter than dews nocturnal breezes weep,
Cool as water in a murmuring pass
And shy as violets in the vernal grass,
But hard as Nisa's heart is he
And salt as the unharvestable sea.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.
    One morn she came; her mouth
    Breathing the odours of the south,
With happy eyes and heaving bosom fain.
She asked for fruit long-stored in autumn's hold.
These gave I; from the branch dislodged I threw
Sweet-hearted apples in their age of gold
And pears divine for taste and hue.
And one I saw, should all the rest excel;
But error led my plucking hand astray
And with a sudden sweet dismay
My heart into her apron fell.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.
    My bleeding heart awhile

Page 27


    She kept and bloomed upon its pain,
Then slighted as a broken thing and vile.
Now Mopsus in his unblest arms,
Mopsus enfolds her heavenlier charms,
Mopsus to whom the Muse averse
Refused her gracious secrets to rehearse.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, breathe yet thy strain.
    Ye glades, your bliss I grudge you not,
    Nor would I that my grief profane
Your sacred summer with intruding thought.
Yet since I will no more behold
Your glorious beauty stained with gold
From shadows of her hair, nor by some well
Made naked of their sylvan dress
The breasts, the limbs I never shall possess,
Therefore, O mother Arethuse, farewell.

For me no place abides
By the green verge of thy beloved tides.
To Lethe let my footsteps go
And wailing waters in the realms below,
Where happier song is none than moaning pain
Nor any lovelier Syrinx than the weed.
Child of the lisping waters, hush thy strain,
O murmuring, plaintive reed.









Let us co-create the website.

Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.

Image Description
Connect for updates