Part V
Select Poems from The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems*
I
(Has this poem too "brainy" an air? What do you think of the turn in the last stanza?)
Your Face
Your face unveils the cry,
Divinely deep,
Heard from the inscrutable core
Of mystic sleep—
A lure of rapturous tune
Where vision fails,
Like a nest of heaven-hearted
Nightingales.
No hush of love could catch
That soul of swoon:
Dawn's body ever crossed
My dream too soon.
But now with a face of dawn
Night yearns to me,
Kindling the distances
Of lost divinity.
* Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1993.
I: "Overhead Poetry" with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, pp. 182-87.
II: "Uncollected Work", pp. 484-91; Sri Aurobindo's Comments on the Poems, pp. 688-91.
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SRI AUROBINDO COMMENT
"I don't find it brainy in any unpoetic sense - the turn in the last stanza might have been thought ingenious if it had not been given so fine a poetic form. A very fine little lyric with that intuitively felicitous choice of words which is very usual with you when you write in this kind."
The double marks in the margin are Sri Aurobindo's.
*
Dragon
A cry of gold piercing the spine's dark sleep,
A dragon fire consuming mortal thought,
An aureoled hunger that makes time fall dead,
My passion curves from bliss to heavenward bliss.
Kindling the rhythm of a myriad smile,
This white wave lifted by some virgin deep
Breaks through the embodied moments of the mind
To a starry universe of infinite trance.
"All the lines are very fine, especially those marked. The three first of each stanza have a great intensity of vision -Higher Mind plus Overmind Intuition touch. The last -Higher Mind plus Illumined Mind - is not equal in vision but still not too far below."
(Is it a bad habit on my part or the natural movement of a certain type of inspiration to have several oppositional lines in a poem?)
"I suppose it is the natural movement of the inspiration cumulating illustrative images to light up something unfamiliar to the mind."
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[I have the feeling that this work, which brings in the highest "overhead" as part of its theme, has on the whole the overhead afflatus. How would you estimate it as poetry?]
Thank God...
Thank God for all this wretchedness of love -
The close apocalypt fires that only prove
The shutting of some golden gate in the face!
Not here beside us burning a brief space
Of life is ecstasy: immense, above,
The shining core of a divine abyss
Awaits the earth-unglamoured lonely gaze,
The tense heart broken into widenesses!
All quiver and cry of time is splendoured there
By an ageless alchemy smiling everywhere.
"Perfect in thought and expression. "The tense heart broken into widenesses' is a very fine line. (I suppose 'alchemy' can smile - usually it doesn't.)"
Nirodbaran, who read the poem out to Sri Aurobindo, reports that Sri Aurobindo repeated several times to himself the phrase which he has called "a very fine line".
(Here is a poem about all the planes, briefly characterising them. It starts with the "inconscient" physical, then proceeds to the vital and the mental, with the psychic innermost recess between them - then sums up the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind and the Intuition and finally goes to the Overmind, the Supermind and the unmanifest Absolute. Do you think a special key is necessary to explain the
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poem or does it possess a sufficiently intelligible sugges-tiveness as a whole as well as in each part to give an intuitive sense of coherent meaning?)
The Hierarchy of Being
Abysmal shadow of the summit-soul -
Self-blinding grope toward the Sorrowless -
Trance-core of labyrinthine outwardness -
Visage of gloom with flowering aureole.
Streak on gold streak wounding the illusive night -
Miraculous monarchy of eagled gaze -
Eternal truth's time-measuring sun-blaze -
Lonely omnipotence locked in self-light.
"I can hardly say - it is quite clear to me, but I don't know what would happen to the ordinary reader. It is a fine poem, the last stanza remarkable." #
(Now I pick up the overhead theme at its culmination, the supreme plane whose forefront is the Supermind and which bears behind the Supermind the Ananda or Delight-plenitude, the Chit-Tapas or fullness of Consciousness-Force, the Sat or status of immeasurable Existence - yes, I take the supreme manifesting plane and regard it as still less than the very being of the Absolute, the utter unfathomable all-sufficient Divine. But have I practically succeeded? Are not my lines somewhat stiff in expression and rhythm?)
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Absolute
Lustre whose vanishing point we call the sun -
Joy whose one drop drowns seas of all desire -
Life rendering time's heart a hollow hush -
Potence of poise unplumbed by infinite space!
Not unto you I strain, O miracled boons,
But that most inward marvel, the sheer Self
Who bears your beauty; and, devoid of you,
His dark unknown would yet fulfil my love.
"No, they are not stiff: the expression is successful and the rhythm harmonious. The first three lines are magnificent."
Deluge
You fear clay's solid rapture will be gone
If once your love dives deep to the Unknown -
But how shall body not seem a hollow space
When the soul bears eternity's embrace? -
Eternity which to the outward glance
Is some unmoving painted sea of trance,
Lifeless, an artist's dream - till suddenly
Those phantom colours wake and the whole sea
Hurls from its pictured distance, drowning the eyes
In a passionate world of dense infinities!
No longer will you talk of shadowy bliss:
With measureless life God comes, and our flesh-form
Sways like a weed in His enfolding storm.
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It is extremely fine and quite revealing and effective.
Himalaya
The tides of gold and silver sweep the sky
But bring no tremor to my countenance:
How shall sun-rise or moon-ebb lure, when
Have gripped the Eternal in a rock of trance?
Here centuries lay down their pilgrim cry,
Drowsed with the power in me to press my whole
Bulk of unchanging peace upon the eye
And weigh that vision deep into the soul.
My frigid love no calls of earth can stir.
Straight upward climbs my hush - but this lone flight
Reveals me to broad earth an emperor
Ruling all time's horizons through sheer height!
"A very fine poem. The lines marked are very fine and line 4 superlatively so."
(You have said the poem is "very fine"; but why is it so, what does it succeed in expressing by its theme, and what quality does it have - subtlety, power, colour? Could you explain a little ?)
"Why is a poem fine? By its power of expression and rhythm, I suppose, and its force of substance and image. As all these are there, I called it a fine poem. Here there is more power than subtlety - it is the power with which the image of Himalaya as the mountain soul of calm and aspiration and supereminent height is conveyed that makes it fine."
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II
Whitenesses
I have viewed many miracled whitenesses -
The passionless pure anger of thick snow
Falling from heaven; a crest of icy glow
Like the eternal laughter of a god;
And Taj Mahal's imperishable peace,
An emperor's flawless dream ecstatic-hewn
By wizard hands out of a plenilune
Of love untarnished by the mouldering sod.
But once I knew a whiteness stranger still:
Limb-mystery kindled to dancing gesture -
A rhythm of adoration its sole vesture,
And every line a call from paradise
Singing to earth the rapture of shut eyes
Impregnate with some vast Invisible!
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "It is a very good sonnet. 17.6.35)
Inward
All night long
I see the flames afar,
But I voyage inward
In a boat of star.
Deep and deeper,
Beyond your loves and hates -
A cool dream laden
With silver freights,
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My lonely calm
Follows a rapture-breeze,
Until I wander
Dazzling seas.
Billows of light
Rise up and press me down;
In a golden beauty
My silvers drown.
Past all gloom
My voyager heart's in-drawn,
One with eternal
Depths of dawn.
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "Very good." 25.6.35)
Disloyalty
Sweet Calm! forgive the many times I hurled
My hard undreamful glance upon Thy face:
Forgive the irreparable nights and days
I gloried in Thy farness from the world.
Forgive the folly that pronounced Thee far -
Thou whom all creatures breathe or else they die:
Life of our life, yet hidden to our eye
Because we have forgotten that each scar
Brims with Thy God-hue, just as every glow
Of joy is but Thy blossoming in our heart!
Even forgive sad hours when all too low
And earth-born I have felt, deeming Thou wert
Too heaven-high - as if time-changes could
Mar my soul's birth from Thy eternal Motherhood!
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "It is very fine." 26.6.35)
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Night's Day
When the purple
Calm of night
Veils the roving
Outer sight,
I feel You - Beauty
Void of blame! -
And my whole being
Sinks in shame.
But, with this falling
Worship-mood,
Falls from me
My humanhood.
A giant glow
Honies the heart:
Across each atom
Sun-rays dart
Within a hushful
Firmament
Deep-arching through
My figure bent
In dross-surrender
To your sweet
Invisible
God-precious feet.
And when this Day
Of night is gone,
I call but darkness
Each new dawn.
[Question: "Any good? And what plane?"]
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "Very good. Intuition but a little less intense in detail." 29.6.35)
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The Paramour of Soordas
"You deem me a bliss
That never can die;
But death comes gathering flowers,
And a flower am I.
Why do you strain
To a little thing
Your mouth of limitless
Heart-hungering?
Tear down this timeful
Mask of me:
What you desire,
O flame Is eternity!
Seeker of unflawed
Loveliness -
Let all your passion of body
Inward press
Unto a Splendour
Beyond decay:
Hold in a deep embrace
Of sheathing clay
The ineffable Spirit
Whose mystery
Alone can fill your love's
Immensity!"
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "It is very good." 30.6.35)
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Verge
When glow and gloom are one before day-rise
And half sleep hears in every sound a secret,
Miraculous horizons touch the eye.
But oh the long day-void of outer space!
What sea can charm us to the shimmery goal
Of unknown musics surging through the mind?...
We journey till the breeze sinks to a prayer
And stirless shadows seem a hidden light.
Then slowly round the hush an aureole dreams,
Building cool paradise out of old pain.
But ere we plumb the haze-world, poignancies
Cry through our soul and sharp crags cut the moon!
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "It is fine poetry, but it is less strongly cut in language and rhythm than the previous one. It is more dim in its suggestion, 'shimmery' and 'haze-world' I suppose in form and colour.
"The last half is cut into three 'two lines', they cannot be called couplets, not being rhymed. This is a spacing difficult to carry out without creating some monotony in the total effect. The first half's spacing 3.1.2. is an easier arrangement to execute.
"...I suppose on a reading of the whole poem one can without much difficulty realise that the two parts of the poem are correspondents, one of the dawn-depths and the other of the evening-depths." 4.11.35)
Beyond
Now dream-gods die, extinguished by a deep
Incomprehensible breath of sudden sleep,
A dark breath craving for diviner bliss!
O night of soul, are you a secret kiss
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Sworn to an ultimate Bridegroom yet unknown,
Some giant goldenness waiting alone
Beyond the half-lit dalliance of star-skies
That weave a mesh of myriad paradise?
Are you a virgin hunger for Truth's one
Love-splendoured mouth of sacramental sun?
[To the query "Does the language catch the symbolic farce of the poetic vision?"]
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "It does - perfect - with a real splendour of poetic style." 15.11.35)
Realisation
Life has no aim for me
Save to behold
In a sleep of ebony
Dreams of gold;
To stretch my little hand -
Suddenly feel
Over the drowsy fingers
A new life steal,
Because they pluck afar
One magic bloom
Out of the dreams that star
The hush of gloom;
Then to awake and see
Still on my palm
The flower of mystery,
Quenchless and calm!
(Sri Aurobindo's Comment: "Very happy." 23.11.35)
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