Overhead Poetry

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 I

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!

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"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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