Overhead Poetry

Great Mother

Great Mother, grant me this one boon I crave:

I will forgo all triumphs of the mind

And grandiose honours for which men have pined

If in its search for Thee my life be brave.

Beyond earth's crowded hours of brief delight,

Of passionate anarchy whose eyes are blind,

Let me on feet of calm devotion find

The lonely soul's sweet contemplative height.

And from the crest of that serenity

Whence Thy far infinite face can be divined,

An endless song let all my ardour be

To reach Thy beauty, leaving lust behind —

No stern forced worship but love self-consigned,

A river's leap towards the pristine sea.

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"A very beautiful poem grave and harmonious and true in thought and feeling with a fine close."

In terms of poetic source, this comment may be interpreted in the light of Sri Aurobindo's letter mentioning "the psychic source of inspiration which can give a beautiful spiritual poetry" and referring to "the turn of the psychic" as having "an intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language".

Page 94