This is the fourth and final volume in the correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and Dilip. Sri Aurobindo keeps up his correspondence with his 'favourite' son throughout the difficult war years. Mother’s letters to Dilip are included in this volume.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
*
January 22, 1942
To Dilip
With love and special blessings on the occasion of his birthday.
“A few consecrate all of themselves and all they have – soul, life, work, wealth; these are the true children of God.” To one of them. Mother
February 17, 1942
(Gist of Dilipda’s letter to Sri Aurobindo of 8.2.42)
1 enclose a letter of my friend Gnan Ghosh7 dated 5.2.42 where he describes the sufferings of Hashi8 during her last days. I was much moved by this dark tragedy especially as I had hoped against hope that she would eventually recover. I am often reminded now-a-days of her deep ineradicable pessimism. She refused of late to expect anything from this world cut out essentially for suffering and falsehood and heartless greed which is so native to human pettiness and selfishness. Only a few good people still exist here, unaccountable, she used to say, laughing, and even these were better out of this unhappy planet, she had decided. She did not want to live, she told me again and again. I sometimes think that if she had a real spiritual opening (though strangely, her music was profoundly moving in its spiritual appeal, her Bengali songs of bhakti, I mean) she might have been saved. But still I often catch myself asking, forgive me, whether she was not substantially right after all? When all is said, is not the case of Mayavadis a very powerful one when they hold (with Gita which says that this world is “anitya” and “asukha” [transient and unhappy]) that this world is doomed to falsehood and suffering because true knowledge or bliss cannot flower in such a barren soil under the condition terrestrial life had formulated? So why not pronounce a swift exit out of it as “a consummation devoutly to be wished?”
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This trend of thought now-a-days has for me a greater appeal than heretofore because I knew Hashi very intimately. She was not only a musical genius whose rival I have not met with, so far, among women, but she was also one of the purest personalities I ran across in our generation. Why did she suffer so, for months, mentally as well as physically? And why was such a lovely born at all if she was to fade away like this, casting a gloom on all who knew her and prized her for her music as well as character? And then add to it all the deepening darkness all over the world. I believe in Grace, but it acts, I take it, only under certain conditions? Perhaps this world will never consent to them? So why hug it – where the divine guidance seems so accidental, almost out of place – to all intents and purposes?
The question you have put raises one of the most difficult and complicated of all problems and to deal with it at all adequately would need an answer as long as the longest chapter of The Life Divine. I can only state my own knowledge founded not on reasoning but on experience that there is such a guidance and that nothing is in vain in this universe.
If we look only at outward facts in their surface appearance or if we regard what we see happening around us as definitive, not as processes of a moment in a developing whole, the guidance is not apparent; at most we may see interventions occasional or sometimes frequent. The guidance can become evident only if we go behind appearances and begin to understand the forces at work and the way of their working and their secret significance. After all, real knowledge – even scientific knowledge – comes by going behind the surface phenomena to their hidden process and causes. It is quite obvious that this world is full of suffering, and afflicted with transience to a degree that seems to justify the Gita’s description of it as “this unhappy and transient world”, anityam asukham. The question is whether it is a mere creation of Chance or governed by a mechanical inconscient Law or whether there is a meaning in it and something beyond its present appearance towards which we move. If there is a meaning and if there is something towards which things are evolving, then inevitably there must be a guidance – and that means that a supporting Consciousness and Will is there with which we can come into inner contact. If there is such a Consciousness and Will, it is not likely that it would stultify itself by annulling the world’s meaning or turning it into a perpetual or eventual failure.
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This world has a double aspect. It seems to be based on a material Inconscience and an ignorant mind and life full of that Inconscience; error and sorrow, death and suffering are the necessary consequence. But there is evidently too a partially successful endeavour and an imperfect growth towards Light, Knowledge, Truth, Good, Happiness, Harmony, Beauty – at least a partial flowering of these things. The meaning of this world must evidently lie in this opposition; it must be an evolution which is leading or struggling towards higher things out of a first darker appearance. Whatever guidance there is must be given under these conditions of opposition and struggle and must be leading towards that higher state of things. It is leading the individual, certainly, and the world, presumably, towards the higher state, but through the double terms of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, death and life, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering; none of the terms can be excluded until the higher status is reached and established. It is not and cannot be, ordinarily, a guidance which at once rejects the darker terms, still less a guidance which brings us solely and always nothing but happiness, success and good fortune. Its main concern is with the growth of our being and consciousness, the growth towards a higher self, towards the Divine, eventually towards a higher Light, Truth and Bliss; the rest is secondary, sometimes a means, sometimes a result, not a primary purpose.
The true sense of the guidance becomes clearer when we can go deep within and see from there more intimately the play of the forces and receive intimations of the Will behind them. The surface mind can get only an imperfect glimpse. When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision,we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended, without our knowing it, towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made – not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but also the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals. But with each person the guidance works differently according to his nature, the conditions of his life, his cast of consciousness, his stage of development, his need of further experience. We are not automata but conscious beings and our mentality, our will and its decisions, our attitude to life and demand on it, our motives and movements help to determine our course; they may lead to much suffering and evil, but through it all, the guidance makes use of them for our growth in experience and consequently the development of our being and consciousness. All advance, by however devious ways, even in spite of what seems a going backwards or going astray, gathering whatever experience is necessary for the soul’s destiny. When we are in close contact with the Divine, a protection can come which helps or directly guides or moves us: it does not throw aside all difficulties, sufferings or dangers, but it carries us through them and out of them – except where for a special purpose there is need of the opposite.
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It is the same thing though on a larger scale and in a more complex way with the guidance of the world-movement.
That seems to move according to the conditions and laws or forces of the moment through constant vicissitudes, but still there is something in it that drives towards the evolutionary purpose, although it is more difficult to see, understand and follow than in the smaller and more intimate field of the individual consciousness and life. What happens at a particular juncture of the world-action or the life of humanity, however catastrophic, is not ultimately determinative. Here, too, one has to see not only the outward play of forces in a particular case or at a particular time but also the inner and secret play, the far-off outcome, the event that lies beyond and the Will at work behind it all. Falsehood and Darkness are strong everywhere on the earth, and have always been so and at times they seem to dominate; but there have also been not only gleams but outbursts of the Light. In the mass of things and the long course of Time, whatever may be the appearance of this or that epoch or movement, the growth of Light is there and the struggle towards better things does not cease. At the present time Falsehood and Darkness have gathered their forces and are extremely powerful; but even if we reject the assertion of the mystics and prophets since early times that such a condition of things must precede the Manifestation and is even a sign of its approach, yet it does not necessarily indicate the decisive victory – even temporary – of the Falsehood. It merely means that the struggle between the Forces is at its acme. The result may very well be the stronger emergence of the best that can be; for the world-movement often works in that way. I leave it at that and say nothing more.
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Hashi had reached a stage of her development marked by a predominance of the sattwic nature, but not a strong vital (which works towards a successful or fortunate life) or the opening to a higher light – her mental upbringing and surroundings stood against that and she herself was not ready. The early death and much suffering may have been the result of past (prenatal) influences or they may have been chosen by her own psychic being as a passage towards a higher state for which she was not yet prepared but towards which she was moving. This and the non-fulfilment of her capacities would be a final tragedy if there were this life alone. As it is she has passed towards the psychic sleep to prepare for her life to come.
May 29, 1942
I am certainly not going to give you strength to go away, since that is a solution which is no solution at all. The solution is to get rid of or at least to reject all these suggestions from a wrong quarter and the state of mind which they create in you and to revert to the firm attitude and right state of consciousness which for so long a time you had maintained; at that time you were not allowing wrong suggestions, adverse happenings, temporary depressions to upset the attitude. You had made great progress – for progress in Yoga is not to be measured by occult experiences only, but by change in the nature. You have seen for yourself that people can have such experiences and yet remain where they were, with the same vital egoism and reactions. You had realised the necessity of getting rid of the ego and its reactions. When we asked you not to allow yourself to be upset or worried by imputations made against you or other disagreeables in the recent incident, we were only speaking in the spirit of your own effort and attitude, asking you to keep it up and not let yourself be shaken from it. It was certainly not a proof of indifference or non-understanding – it would certainly be a strange thing if at this stage I were unable to understand these things – it was rather from solicitude for your peace and inner progress that we spoke.
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My retirement is nothing new, even the cessation of contact by correspondence is nothing new – it has been there now for a long time. I had to establish the rule not out of personal preference or likes or dislikes, but because I found that the correspondence occupied the greater part of my time and my energies and there was a danger of my real work remaining neglected and undone if I did not change my course and devote myself to it, while the actual results of this outer activity were very small – it cannot be said that it resulted in the Ashram making a great spiritual progress. Now in these times of world-crisis when I have had to be on guard and concentrated all the time to prevent irremediable catastrophes and have still to be so, and when, besides, the major movement of the inner spiritual work needs an equal concentration and persistence, it is not possible for me to abandon my rule. (Moreover, even for the individual sadhak it is in his interest that this major spiritual work should be done, for its success would create conditions under which his difficulties could be much more easily overcome.) All the same I have broken my rule, and broken it for you alone; I do not see how that can be interpreted as a want of love and a hard granite indifference. However, my main point is that for a very long time you had entered into a consciousness and right attitude in which you accepted this necessity and showed a clear understanding of it and even felt and wrote that it was done for the best good of the sadhaks also. It would be a misfortune now to return to the old vital reactions, suggestions, despondencies and despairs and obscuration of the consciousness. I know that it is not easy to maintain the true consciousness and attitude even when one has found it; but it has to be done, for it is the only way which will lead to anything.
If the tension is too great and relief is needed, we have no objection to your getting it at Almora or elsewhere, but to go away and throw up the sponge is not a thing to do. To get back to the right attitude you had developed and resume the inner endeavour is the right course.
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March 30, 1942
I am not responsible for anything that may have been said by any sadhak in the Ashram. I have not said that Subhas was my enemy, and that anybody sympathising with him ought to leave the Ashram. If this statement was made, it certainly did not have my authority. There is absolutely no reason why you should say anything contrary to your feelings or to what you believe to be the truth, or feel that in not doing so you were going contrary to what was expected of you and think of leaving the Ashram. The question you put me as to what you should do, does not really come, for I will never make any such demand on anybody. I hope that will clear your mind and restore your peace.
By the way, none sees me daily and talks with me except the Mother and those who have been in attendance on me since the accident. Anything to the contrary you may have heard is incorrect.
The report of Subhas’ death has not yet been definitely [ascertained]. The Japanese official radio mentioned the crash and Indian deaths but no names. The news comes from Vichy, which is not always or often reliable.
May 30, 1942
(From Mother)
You can always be confident of our love and sympathy through everything and in all circumstances. Be sure that we understand fully your difficulties and your will to overcome.
Your sincere effort is bound to prevail and, I hope, soon. Believe that when trouble does come our reaction will be sympathy and support and nothing else. Our love and blessings
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October 19, 1942
These ideas are only suggestions that always come up when you allow this sadness to grow in you; instead of indulging them, they should be immediately thrown from you. There is no “why” to your feeling of our far-away-ness and indifference, for these do not exist, and the feeling comes up automatically without any true reason along with this wave of the wrong kind of consciousness. Whenever this comes up, you should be at once sure that it is a wrong turn and stop it and reject all its characteristic suggestions. It is when you have been able to do so for a long time that you have made great progress and developed a right consciousness and right ideas and the true psychic attitude. You are not hampering our work nor standing in the way of others coming here; in clinging to the sadhana in spite of all difficulties you are not deceiving yourself but, on the contrary, doing the right thing and you are certainly not deceiving the Divine, who knows very well both your aspiration and your difficulties. So there is not a shred of a reason for your going away. If you “sincerely want to do Yoga”, and there can be no doubt about that, that is quite a sufficient reason for your being here. It does not matter about not having as yet any occult experiences, like the rising of the Kundalini etc.; these come to some early, to some late; and there are besides different lines of such experiences for different natures. You should not hanker after these or get disappointed and despondent because they do not yet come. These things can be left to come of themselves when the consciousness is ready. What you have to aspire to is bhakti, purification of the nature, right psychic consciousness and surrender. Aspire for bhakti and it will grow in you. It is already there within and it is that which expresses itself in your poetry and music and the feelings that rise up as in the temple of the Mother at the Cape. As the bhakti and purity in the nature grow, the right psychic consciousness will also increase and lead to the full surrender. But keep steady and don’t indulge these ideas of incapacity and frustration and going away; they are stuff of tamas and good only to be flung aside.
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October 21, 1942
The up and down movement which you speak of is common to all ways of Yoga. It is there in the path of Bhakti, but there are equally alternations of states of light and states of darkness, sometimes sheer and prolonged darkness, when one follows the path of knowledge. Those who have occult experiences come to periods when all experiences cease and even seem finished for ever. Even when there have been many and permanent realisations, these seem to go behind the veil and leave nothing in front except a dull blank, filled, if at all, only with recurrent attacks and difficulties. These alternations are the result of the nature of human consciousness and are not a proof of unfitness or of predestined failure. One has to be prepared for them and pass through. They are the “day and night” of the Vedic mystics.
As for surrender, everyone has his own first way of approach towards it; but if it is due to fear, “form”, or sense of duty, then certainly that is not surrender at all; these things have nothing to do with surrender. Also, complete and total surrender is not so easy as some seem to imagine. There are always many and large reservations; even if one is not conscious of them, they are there. Complete surrender can best come by a complete love and bhakti. Bhakti, on the other hand, can begin without surrender, but it naturally leads, as it forms itself, to surrender.
You are surely mistaken in thinking that the difficulty of giving up intellectual convictions is a special stumbling-block in you more than in others. The attachment to one’s own ideas and convictions, the insistence on them is a common characteristic [and here it seems to manifest itself with an especial vehemence].9 It can be removed by a light of knowledge from above which gives one the direct touch of Truth or the luminous experience of it and takes away all value from mere intellectual opinion, ideas or conviction and removes the necessity for it, or by a right consciousness which brings with it right ideas, right feeling, right action and right everything else. Or else it must come by a spiritual and mental humility which is rare in human nature – especially the mental, for the mind is always apt to think its own ideas, true or false, are the right ideas. Eventually, it is the psychic growth that makes this surrender too possible and that again comes most easily by bhakti. In any case, the existence of this difficulty is not in itself a good cause for forecasting failure in yoga.
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Please forgive me for having to ask something about your philosophy. It is because I have been of late discussing a lot with Haridas about different aspects of your vision of our cosmic life and your new clues. I told him that I have the impression that you have either written to somebody or somewhere in the Synthesis that those who want like the Moksha-lovers, to be merged for ever in the Absolute, (the Non-being or the Transcendental) may do so with the result that they will achieve it, but that Nirvana is but a stage (I read this in a book on Tibetan
Buddhism too, fancy that!) and those who achieve it have to be reborn again to re-undertake the work of liberation postponed for a time. I mean that I somehow feel that you have written that even Moksha can be but a temporary sojourn of the soul, the ultimate aim and end of cosmos must be to attain bliss of the Divine through the attainment of Supermind or rather bringing it down as a leaven at first, finally to transform our terrestrial life. I have tried to picture it thus a little poetically maybe as my poem “Dream to Dream” today may show, but since I take it that I have your support in this view I would like to know how much truth there is in my interpretation. But, I repeat, I have a feeling that I have read it somewhere in your writings. Since, however, I can’t just now locate it, would it be too much to ask you to write just a few lines, especially as Haridas has been asking me to show him where you have said this. Or am I really mistaken in thinking that you have said this? Or is it partly true but partly wrong, the incorrectness deriving from wishful thinking?
I don’t think I have written, but I said once that souls which have passed into Nirvana may (not “must”) return to complete the larger upward curve. I have written somewhere, I think, that for this Yoga (it might also be added, in the natural complete order of the manifestation) the experience of Nirvana can only be a stage or passage to the complete realisation.
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I have said also that there are many doors by which one can pass into the realisation of the Absolute (Parabrahman) and Nirvana is one of them, but by no means the only one. You may remember Ramakrishna’s saying that the Jivakoti [a human being who, once immersed in God cannot return] can ascend the stairs, but not return, while the Ishwarakoti [a divine human being] can ascend and descend at will. If that is so the Jivakoti might be those who describe only the curve from Matter through Mind into the silent Brahman and the Ishwarakoti those who get the integral Reality and can therefore combine the Ascent with the Descent and contain the “two ends” of existence in their single being.
November 18, 1942
I thought that my letter, however brief, would make clear my reason for not writing more – viz. that Duraiswamy was not leaving the Ashram for good or as a defeatist or a failure. That is evident from his own statements and experiences in his letter and unless I assume these to be falsehoods, how can I treat him as a defeatist and a failure and set out to explain his fall? That would be like explaining the cause of a headache when there was no headache. The only thing I could explain or set out at length was the struggle in himself (a vital not mental struggle), from which he precipitately sought a temporary escape; but that I cannot do since it involves writing about things personal to him and private. He would certainly dislike my writing about them to others than himself. That was the reason for my silence.
As for the other matter, the Mother had taken a decision before you wrote and it was the only one possible. Janaki Prasad’s wife’s coming here would mean the destruction of Mother’s work on him and of his peace and recovered balance. Already she had met and upset him and if she had stayed till the Darshan that would have happened again and again. Her demand for darshan and Pranam (to which she has no claim whatever as she is not a disciple and came without permission) was only a manoeuvre by which she could get in the end of the wedge and figure as a devotee and so hope to put up a claim for entering the Ashram which would have been the end of Janaki Prasad.
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I had explained through Nirod that it was impossible to allow her because of Janaki Prasad and why. I did not explain specially about the request for Pranam – that logically hangs on to the rest. She did not come here out of any personal devotion to the Mother; she was quite prepared to go to R in her seeking for the Divine if she could not get in here – that was the best she could do, since we were not prepared to offer up Janaki Prasad as a sacrifice – and so it was arranged. I hope these things are now perfectly clear.
P.S. By the way, why does everybody assume that such and such a sadhak must be above a fit of difficulties and crises. I should [?] that such immunity even among great yogis, must be very rare.
November 20, 1942
We think that a telegram or any pressure put on Durai-swamy to return or to change his decision would do more harm than good. He has made his position quite clear in his letter to Anasuya and he does not want anything that would be a questioning of it. His position is that he has made the best decision possible – best both for himself and the Ashram. He has been led to it by a Power which has always led him and whose action has always been for the best. He is not going in a wrong spirit, he will return joyfully when the time comes for that. There is nothing therefore for his family or friends to worry about or feel sad; any excitement or fuss would be ridiculous and uncalled for and they must not take any share in it. He has taken this position very firmly and to be pressed to come back as if he had taken a wrong course is just what he does not want; his precipitation in going away before the Darshan instead of after it, he would like evidently to be ignored or forgotten. All is for the best, he himself is quite happy and cheerful and when he comes back, he will explain his motives (at present he is saying nothing to anybody) and we will all laugh over the affair. I think we must act as if we accepted his attitude. In a man of Duraiswamy’s nature any change of his decision must be allowed to come from within himself not by any outward pressure. Let us leave it to his own psychic being, giving it only a silent and inner assistance.
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December 24, 1942
Kindly revise once more, especially page 3 where I have inserted a few... [incomplete]
Milford accepts (incidentally, with special regard to the word frosty in Clough’s line about the Cairngorm10), the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind this rule accepted and generally applied would amount in practice to an absurdity; [line illegible] verse where quantity by itself has no metrical value but in any attempt at quantitative metre in eccentricities like the scansions of Bridges. I shall go on pronouncing the y of frosty as short whether it has two consonants after it or only one or none; it remains frosty whether it is a frosty scalp or frosty top or a frosty anything. In no case does the second syllable [assume] a length of sound equivalent to that of two long vowels. My hexameters are intended to be read naturally as one would read any English sentence; stress is given its full metrical value, long syllables also are given their full metrical value and not flattened out so as to [assure] a fictitious metrical [theory]; short vowels [??] two consonants after the one treated as short, because they [?] value in any natural reading. But if you admit a short syllable to be long whenever there are two consonants after it, then Bridges’ scansions are perfectly justified. Milford does not accept that conclusion; he says Bridges’ scansions are an absurdity and I agree with him there. But he bases this on his idea that quantitative length does not count in English verse. It is intonation that makes the metre, he says, high tones or low tones – not longs and shorts, obviously stress is a high tone of the greatest importance and to ignore it is fatal to any metrical theory or natural treatment of the language – and so far I agree. But on that ground he refuses to discuss my idea of weight or dwelling of the voice or admit quantity or anything else but tone as determinative of the metre; he even declares that there can be no such thing as metrical length, the very idea is an [error]. Perhaps also that is the reason why he counts frosty as a spondee before scalp; he thinks that it causes it to be intoned in a different way. I don’t see how it does that. For my part, I intone it just the same before top as before scalp.
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The ordinary theory is, I believe, that the sc of scalp acts as a sort of stile (because of the opposition of the two consonants to [rapid metre]) which you take time to cross, so that ty must be considered as long because of this delay of the voice, while the t of top is merely a line across the path which gives no trouble. I don’t see it like that; the delay of metre, such as it is and it is very slight, is not caused by any dwelling on the last syllable of the [preceding] sound, it is in the word scalp itself that the delay is made; one takes longer to pronounce scalp, scalp is a slightly longer sound than top and there is too a slight natural impediment to the voice that is absent in the lighter syllable and this may have some effect for the rhythm of the line but it cannot change the metre; it cannot lengthen the preceding syllable so as to turn a trochee into a spondee. Sanskrit quantitation is irrelevant here (it is the same as Latin or Greek in respect to this rule); but both of us agree that the Classical quantitative conventions are not reproducible in English metre and it is for that reason that we reject Bridges’ eccentric scansions. Where we disagree is that I treat stress as equivalent to length and give quantity as well as stress a metrical and not only a rhythmic value.
This answers also your question as to what Milford means by “fundamental confusion” re. aridity. He refuses to accept the idea of metrical length. But I am concerned with metrical as well as natural vowel quantities. My theory is that natural length in English depends, or can depend, on the dwelling of the voice giving metrical value or weight to the syllable; in quantitative verse one has to take account of all such dwelling or weight of the voice, both by ictus (= stress) and weight by prolongation of the voice (ordinarily syllabic length); the two are different, but for metrical purposes in a quantitative verse can rank as of equal value. I do not say that stress turns a short vowel into a long one!
Milford does not take the trouble to understand my theory – he ignores the importance I give to modulations and treats cretics and antibacchii and molossi as if they were dactyls, whereas they are only substitutes for dactyls; he ignores my objection to stressing short insignificant words like and, with, but, the – and thinks that I do that everywhere, which would be to ignore my theory. In fact I have scrupulously applied my theory in every detail of my practice. Take for instance (Ahana):
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“Art thou not heaven-bound even as I with the earth?
Hast thou ended....”
Here art is long by natural quantity though unstressed, which disproves Milford’s criticism that in practice I never put an unstressed long as the first syllable of a dactylic foot or spondee, as I should do by my theory. I don’t do it often because normally in English rhythm stress bears the foot – a fact to which I have given full emphasis in my theory. That is the reason why I condemn the Bridgesean disregard of stress in the rhythm – still I do it occasionally whenever it can come in quite naturally.1 My quantitative system, as I have shown at great length, is based on the natural movement of the English tongue, the same in prose and poetry, not on any artificial theory.
(Dilipda’s Note)
These instances were given by Sri Aurobindo as modulations in his hexameters, the modulations which Mr. Milford seemed to me to have either ignored or scanned differently. I had written also that Mr. Milford must have missed Sri Aurobindo’s cretics and anti-bacchii in lines such as: (cretic)
Half yet awake in light’s turrets started the scouts of the morning
(or cretic again) Victory offered an empty delight without guerdon or profit
(or again cretic) Universe flung beyond universe, law of the stars and their courses.
J cited some anti-bacchii also: Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal Earth-shaker who with his trident releases the coils of the Dragon Play-routes of wisdom and vision and struggle and rapture and sorrow
___________________
1 E.g. Opening tribrachs are very frequent in my hexameter: Is he the first? was there none then before him? shall none come after? (Ahana)
But Milford thinks I have stressed the first short syllable to make them into dactyls – a thing I abhor. Cf. also Ahana (initial anapaest): In the hard reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even or (two anapaests):
Yet survives bliss in the rhythm of our heart-beats, yet is there wonder
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Molossi:
Self-ward, form-bound, mute, motionless, slowly inevitably emerges
Ever can pierce where they dwell and uncover their far-stretching purpose
Or again:
And we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled to his dreadful
embraces
Or in my poem Ilion:
And the first Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches; There are even opening amphibrachs here and there: Illuminations, trance-seeds of silence, flowers of musing (Ahana)
The point I made here was that Mr. Milford was mistaken in his bold assertion that Sri Aurobindo had nowhere in his hexameters used longs in the second or third syllable. In anti-bacchius the second syllable is long, in cretic the third and in molossus the second as well as the third (in addition to the first long of course, I mean) which surely disproves the above charge.
More instances can be given of tribrach, anapaest, etc. but I hardly think they are needed. Anybody who has taken the trouble to note the variety of modulations in Sri Aurobindo’s poems in the quantative metre will have to agree that he has at least practiced what he has preached. I only regretted in my letter to Sri Aurobindo that Mr. Milford has been demonstrably unfair to the poet. But I am sure that the critic will in the end withdraw his pointed charges as having been disproved to the hilt.
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