Sri Aurobindo's principal work of literary criticism where he outlines the history of English poetry and explores the possibility of a spiritual poetry in the future.
On Poetry
Sri Aurobindo's principal work of literary criticism. In this work, Sri Aurobindo outlines the history of English poetry and explores the possibility of a spiritual poetry in the future. It was first published in a series of essays between 1917 and 1920; parts were later revised for publication as a book.
THEME/S
Free quantitative verse with a predominant dactylic movement.
(1) The Silence
Into the Silence, into the Silence, Arise, O Spirit immortal, Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle. Ascend, single and deathless: Care no more for the whispers and the shoutings in the darkness, Pass from the sphere of the grey and the little, Leaving the cry and the struggle, Into the Silence for ever.
Vast and immobile, formless and marvellous, Higher than Heaven, wider than the universe, In a pure glory of being, In a bright stillness of self-seeing, Communing with a boundlessness voiceless and intimate, Make thy knowledge too high for thought, thy joy too deep for emotion; At rest in the unchanging Light, mute with the wordless self-vision, Spirit, pass out of thyself; Soul, escape from the clutch of Nature. All thou hast seen cast from thee, O Witness. Turn to the Alone and the Absolute, turn to the Eternal: Be only eternity, peace and silence, O world-transcending nameless Oneness, Spirit immortal.
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(2) Beyond the Silence
Out from the Silence, out from the Silence, Carrying with thee the ineffable Substance, Carrying with thee the splendour and wideness, Ascend, O Spirit immortal. Assigning to Time its endless meaning, Blissful enter into the clasp of the Timeless. Awake in the living Eternal, taken to the bosom of love of the Infinite, Live self-found in his endless completeness, Drowned in his joy and his sweetness, Thy heart close to the heart of the Godhead for ever.
Vast, God-possessing, embraced by the Wonderful, Lifted by the All-Beautiful into his infinite beauty, Love shall envelop thee endless and fathomless, Joy unimaginable, ecstasy illimitable, Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient, Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless. One with the Transcendent, calm, universal, Single and free, yet innumerably living, All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling, Act in the world with thy being beyond it. Soul, exceed life's boundaries; Spirit, surpass the universe. Outclimbing the summits of Nature, Transcending and uplifting the soul of the finite, Rise with the world in thy bosom, O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable. One with the Eternal, live in his infinity, Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead, Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe, Spirit immortal.
Page 384
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