All poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms.
Poems
This volume consists of all poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms. All such poems published by Sri Aurobindo during his lifetime are included here, as well as poems found among his manuscripts after his passing. Sri Aurobindo worked on these poems over the course of seven decades. The first one was published in 1883 when he was ten; a number of poems were written or revised more than sixty years later, in the late 1940s.
THEME/S
Ahana and Other Poems was published in 1915. It consists of the long poem Ahana, written in Pondicherry, and twenty-four shorter poems, most of which were written in Baroda. Sometime after 1915,Sri Aurobindo wrote in his copy of the book, “Written mostly between 1895 and 1908, first published at Pondicherry in 1915.” This inscription shows a degree of uncertainty: “1895” was written over “1900”, while “1908” was written over “1907”. Neither of the dates, written more than a decade after the poems, need be considered exact. Surviving manuscript drafts of these poems do not appear to be earlier than 1900. Near-final drafts of many of them are found in a typed manuscript that may be dated to 1904-6. When Sri Aurobindo looked over these poems in 1942 while his Collected Poems and Plays was being arranged, he commented: “I find that most of the poems are quite early in Baroda, others later on and others in the second period [of poems in the book, i.e. 1906-9]. It would be a pity to break-up these poems, as they form a natural group by themselves.” In the present volume, these twenty-four poems are published in a single group, while “Ahana” is published along with other works written in Pondicherry. Two of the poems in this section, “Karma” and “Appeal”, are adaptations of mediaeval Indian lyrics. They are published herein their original context, and also in Translations, volume 5 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO.
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With wind and the weather beating round me Up to the hill and the moorland I go. Who will come with me? Who will climb with me? Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?
Not in the petty circle of cities Cramped by your doors and your walls I dwell; Over me God is blue in the welkin, Against me the wind and the storm rebel.
I sport with solitude here in my regions, Of misadventure have made me a friend. Who would live largely? Who would live freely? Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.
I am the lord of tempest and mountain, I am the Spirit of freedom and pride. Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.
1908-9. This poem was published in Sri Aurobindo's weekly newspaper Karmayogin on 6 November 1909, under the inscription: “(Composed in the Alipur Jail)”. Sri Aurobindo was a prisoner in Alipore Jail between 5 May 1908 and 6 May 1909.
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