Overhead Poetry

The Sannyasi

(An old story relates how a princess over-proud of her beauty would not accept any lover unless he could first live like a Sannyasi in the Himalayas, practising austerities to purify himself in order to win her favour as of a divinity. One youth, famous for his handsomeness as well as heroic deeds, took up the difficult wager and at the end of the stipulated three years returned to the eagerly waiting princess, but he came now no longer in the mood of a suitor....)

If every look I turn tramples your flesh

Forgive the pilgrim passion of a dream

That presses over the narrow path of limbs

To an azure height beaconing above the mind.

No love could dare to reach your mouth's red heaven

Without a spirit washed in whitenesses—

But who shall hear the call of flickering clay

When titan thunders of the avalanche leap,

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A pinnacle-voice plunging to deeps below 9

As if the agelong barrier broke between 10

Our dubious day and some eternal light? 11

I Nor can a small face fill the widening heart

Where in the ice-pure lonelihood of hush 13

A vast virginity devours all time! 14

O masquerader of the Measureless,

O beauty claiming the Invisible's crown,

The empire of the undying Mystery 17

Has burned across you like an infinite sun 18

Withering for me your body's puny veil!

I Yet all this fire is but the dwarf soul's death:

O strain no more those pale and quivering arms:

Rise from the crumbling cry of littleness 22

Beyond each blinded boundary to feel 23

The immortal Lover flaming through your heart,

The golden smile of the one Self everywhere!

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"The blank verse is quite successful. It is all fine poetry throughout, rising from time to time to overhead sublimity and profound force. Not being able to expatiate at length, I summarise my impression by the marks—double line means overhead inspiration, single line means poetry fine enough and strong but not from overhead, single line with dot means lines which have the overhead touch or might even reveal themselves as overhead if in proper immediate company—the last is the case with line 2. The overhead lines belong to the type that is now usual with you, Higher Mind lifted by Illumination to reach the Intuition level or else Illumined Mind rising to Intuition level; the latter in 9-11, 13-14, 17-18, 22-23. Both are very fine combinations."

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