Overhead Poetry

From Beatrice in Heaven

Each time your eyes of longing rose above

All transient colour to the Invisible,

Their viewless worship mingled with my love.

So, like the sun upon a blinded gaze

You found a warmth of secret splendour spill

And, though unvisioning, felt my rapturous face ...

From these unshadowed paradisal tops

No mortal beauty throws its narrow ray

But only a lustre of immensity drops!

Death leaves me here a timeless self behind—

A dream unvestured of both night and day—

Truth-glory naked in the Immortal Mind—

An image sprung from God's untarnished core

Of mystery beyond the clasp of clay:

The heart's unhaloed cry is heard no more,

But every passion like a surge of light

Carries within a sempiternal sea

Laughter and love of the whole Infinite!

Hence to the hunger of your human call

I bring through nectarous divinity

Of one white wave the ocean of the All.

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"Very fine and quite successful. All through, the language and thought are very felicitous, even though the lines marked stand out among the others."

*

The following exchange of letters is the last literary correspondence in which Sri Aurobindo participated before he left his body on December 5, 1950. His reply is particularly interesting and helpful for its threefold general classification of poetic quality illustrated by concrete examples.

Letter to Sri Aurobindo

Here are two poems for your consideration—perhaps with some overhead breath in them. Please evaluate them critically. They seem to be somewhat antithetical in theme. Are there any lines in them you particularly like?

Amal

27-10-1950

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