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
On 31 December 1934, Nolini Kanta Gupta wrote in a note to Sri Aurobindo: “Sometime ago I typed Seven Sonnets—Are they not in their final form?” Sri Aurobindo replied: “No. I have had no time to see them—and I am still a little doubtful about their quality.” The seven sonnets were (in the order of Nolini's typed copies): “Contrasts”, “Man the Thinking Animal”, “Evolution [1]”, “Evolution [2]”, “The Call of the Impossible”, “Man the Mediator”, and “The Infinitesimal Infinite”. Sri Aurobindo later revised most of the seven, along with an eighth, “The Silver Call”, which is related to “The Infinitesimal Infinite”. After further revision he published “The Infinitesimal Infinite” as part of “Three Sonnets” in 1948 (see above).
Know more >
A trifling unit in a boundless plan Amidst the enormous insignificance Of the unpeopled cosmos' fire-whirl dance, Earth, as by accident, engendered man,
A creature of his own grey ignorance, A mind half shadow and half gleam, a breath That wrestles, captive in a world of death, To live some lame brief years. Yet his advance,
Attempt of a divinity within, A consciousness in the inconscient Night, To realise its own supernal Light, Confronts the ruthless forces of the Unseen.
Aspiring to godhead from insensible clay He travels slow-footed towards the eternal day.
Circa 1934. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript, the earliest contemporaneous with close-to-final drafts of “Transformation” and “The Other Earths”.
Home
Sri Aurobindo
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.