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
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.
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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
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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.
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