book
cwsa
cwsa
toc
Collected Poems
Collected Poems (toc)
KEYS (10k)
425 Sri Aurobindo
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
430 Sri Aurobindo
1:By men is mightiness achieved ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
2:All that we meet is a symbol and gateway ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
3:Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
4:After ‘tis cold, none heeds, none hinders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
5:No one I am, I who am all that is. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Liberation - I, #KEYS
6:IT was for delightHe sought existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
7:My life is a throb of Thy eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Bliss of Identity, #KEYS
8:Beauty of our dim soul is amorous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Our godhead calls us, #KEYS
9:Necessity rules all the infinite world, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 4.2.03 - The Birth of Sin, #KEYS
10:Man’s mind is the dupe of his animal self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A God’s Labour, #KEYS
11:I am an epitome of opposites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.03 - The Spiritual Being of Man, #KEYS
12:And all grows beautiful because Thou art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Divine Hearing, #KEYS
13:All is a wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
14:My body a dot in the soul’s vast expanse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Self’s Infinity, #KEYS
15:In my heart’s chamber lives the unworshipped God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.56 - Omnipresence, #KEYS
16:Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
17:Necessity fashionsAll that the unseen eye has beheld. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
18:The golden virgin, Usha, mother of life,Yet virgin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Urvasie, #KEYS
19:Deep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
20:Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.2.04 - Thought the Paraclete, #KEYS
21:To our gaze God’s light is a darkness, His plan is a chaos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
22:A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
23:Alone the wise Can walk through fire with unblinking eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Epigram, #KEYS
24:Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
25:Mind hushes stilled in eternity; waves of the Infinite wander ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
26:My life is a silence grasped by timeless hands; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Self’s Infinity, #KEYS
27:We are the heirs of infinite widenesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Call of the Impossible, #KEYS
28:Heavy is godhead to bear with its mighty sun-burden of lustre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
29:Heavenly voices to us are a silence, those colours a whiteness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
30:Each is a mass of forces thrown in shape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Discoveries of Science - III, #KEYS
31:Even an hour of the soul can unveil the Unborn, the Everlasting, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
32:God still keepsNear to a paler world the hour ere dawn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Chitrangada, #KEYS
33:Life’s wholeTremendous theorem is Thou complete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.18 - The Divine Worker, #KEYS
34:There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
35:Always the blood is wiser and knows what is hid from the thinker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
36:And all the while within us works His love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
37:Hard are God’s terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
38:Is here and in the pleasant house He choseTo harbour God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
39:Mind is His wax to write and, written, raseForm and name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
40:The sweet vast centre and the cave divineCalled Paradise, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
41:And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
42:Even in the worm is a god and it writhes for a form and an outlet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
43:He who to some gives victory, joy and good,To some gives rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems To R., #KEYS
44:His good and evil, sin and virtue, tillHe bids thee leave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
45:Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
46:Powers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
47:Clouds from Zeus come and pass; his sunshine eternal survives them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
48:Two are the angels of God whom men worship, strength and enjoyment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
49:All things embrace in death and the strife and the hatred are ended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
50:A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth’s pain; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
51:But there is never any end when one has loved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
52:Man his passion prefers to the voice that guides from the immortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
53:You cannot utterly die while the Power lives untired in your bosoms; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
54:Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.” ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
55:Love the signOf one outblaze of godhead that two share. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Life Heavens, #KEYS
56:Fearless of death they must walk who would live and be mighty for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
57:Nobler must kings be than natures of earth on whom Zeus lays no burden. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
58:Through glorious things and base the wheel of GodFor ever runs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
59:Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
60:Alike ‘tis heaven,Rule or obedience to the one heart given. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Khaled of the Sea, #KEYS
61:Yea, the soul of a man too is mightyMore than the stone and the mortar! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
62:All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A Strong Son of Lightning, #KEYS
63:The abodeOf rapturous Love,The bright epiphany whom we name God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
64:Thought for a godlike birthBroadens the mould of our mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Evolution - II, #KEYS
65:Credence, when mediocrity multipliedEquals itself with genius. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Lines on Ireland, #KEYS
66:The Self of things is not their outward view,A Force within decides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.19 - Parabrahman, #KEYS
67:Each finite is that deep InfinityEnshrining His veiled soul of pure delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.65 - Form, #KEYS
68:Helped are the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
69:young portress brightWho opens to our souls the worlds of light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Fear of Death, #KEYS
70:Easy are mortalHearts to be bent by Fate and soon we consent to our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
71:I move in an ocean of stupendous LightJoining my depths to His eternal height. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Light, #KEYS
72:This body which was once my universe,Is now a pittance carried by the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Body, #KEYS
73:All forms are Thy dream-dialect of delight,O Absolute, O vivid Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.62 - Divine Sight, #KEYS
74:Fate,The dim great presence, is but nature madeIrrevocable in its fruits. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Urvasie, #KEYS
75:Good we have made by our thoughts and sin by our fear and recoiling; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
76:Only the past fulfilled can conjure room to the future that presses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
77:Transmuted is ravishment’s minister,A high note and a fiery refrain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Life Heavens, #KEYS
78:A perfect face amid barbarian faces,A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
79:Bliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and death-blast and storm-race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
80:Nor punishes. Impartially he dealsTo every strenuous spirit its chosen reward. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Urvasie, #KEYS
81:A Silence that was Being’s only word,The unknown beginning and the voiceless end ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Adwaita, #KEYS
82:O worshipper of the formless Infinite, Reject not form, what dwells in it is He. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.65 - Form, #KEYS
83:In us the secret Spirit can inditeA page and summary of the Infinite, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.59 - The Hill-top Temple, #KEYS
84:One who has made in sport the suns and seasMirrors in our being his immense caprice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.37 - Lila, #KEYS
85:Rules us, who in the Brahmin and the dogCan, if He will, show equal godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
86:Keep only my soul to adore eternallyAnd meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.2.07 - Surrender, #KEYS
87:The God of Force, the God of Love are one;Not least He loves whom most He smites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 4.2.04 - Epiphany, #KEYS
88:The world’s deep contrasts are but figures spunDraping the unanimity of the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Contrasts, #KEYS
89:A deep spiritual calm no touch can swayUpholds the mystery of this Passion-play. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Life-Unity, #KEYS
90:Alone of gods Death loves not gifts: he visitsThe pure heart as the stained. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
91:It is the Infinite’s blind minute abode.In that small flaming chariot Shiva rides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Electron, #KEYS
92:Men are fathers of their fate;They dig the prison, they the crown command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Lines on Ireland, #KEYS
93:All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,Act in the world with thy being beyond it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems the Ascent, #KEYS
94:Our consciousness a torch that plays Between the Abyss and a supernal Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man of the Mediator, #KEYS
95:A World-adventurer borne on Destiny’s wingGambles with death and triumph, joy and grief. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.37 - Lila, #KEYS
96:No power can slay my soul; it lives in Thee.Thy presence is my immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.18 - The Divine Worker, #KEYS
97:The Master of man and his infinite Lover,He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
98:To whatsoever living form I turnI see my own body with another face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Indwelling Universal, #KEYS
99:As with the figure of a symbol danceThe screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Dual Being, #KEYS
100:Each finite thing I see is a façade;From its windows looks at me the Illimitable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.56 - Omnipresence, #KEYS
101:Hidden in an earthly garment that survives,I am the worldless being vast and free. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Conscious Immortality, #KEYS
102:Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gazeAnd in each voice I hear Thy magic tune: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.61 - Because Thou Art, #KEYS
103:Kali (Iron Lords of Time)Am love, am passion; I create the world.I am the only Brahma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Kama, #KEYS
104:Vainly man, crouched in his corner of safety, shrinks from the fatalLure of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
105:It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,And into the midnight His shadow is thrown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
106:Out, out with the mind and its candle flares,Light, light the suns that never die. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Musa Spiritus, #KEYS
107:The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
108:The impossible is the hint of what shall be,Mortal the door to immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Our godhead calls us, #KEYS
109:In vain was my prison of separate body made;His occult presence burns in every cell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.56 - Omnipresence, #KEYS
110:The darkness was the Omnipotent’s abode,Hood of omniscience, a blind mask of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Inconscient, #KEYS
111:A spark of the eternal Fire, it cameTo build a house in Matter for the Unborn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Miracle of Birth, #KEYS
112:He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,And does what Matter must or Spirit can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.4.01 - Man the Enigma, #KEYS
113:Mystic daughter of Delight,Life, thou ecstasy,Let the radius of thy flightBe eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.06 - The Transformation of Dream Life, #KEYS
114:Naked my spirit from its vestures stands;I am alone with my own self for space. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Self’s Infinity, #KEYS
115:When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,He was seated within it immense and alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
116:Chaff are men’s armiesThreshed by the flails of Fate; ‘tis the soul of the hero that conquers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
117:I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Life Heavens, #KEYS
118:In the inconscient dreadful dumb AbyssAre heard the heart-beats of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.The Unseen Infinite, #KEYS
119:In the night a million stars ariseTo watch us with their ancient friendly eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Perigone Prologuises, #KEYS
120:Our body is an epitome of some Vast That masks its presence by our humanness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.59 - The Hill-top Temple, #KEYS
121:Poet, who first with skill inspired did teachGreatness to our divine Bengali speech. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Madhusudan Dutt, #KEYS
122:The blue sea dances like a girlWith sapphire and with pearlCrowning her locks. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
123:There is a need within the soul of man The splendours of the surface never sate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.28 - The Greater Plan, #KEYS
124:Thy golden Light came down into my feet;My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.26 - The Golden Light, #KEYS
125:Time voyages with Thee upon its prow,—And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.61 - Because Thou Art, #KEYS
126:Immeasurable ecstasy where TimeAnd Space have fainted in a swoon sublime! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
127:Death is but changing of our robes to waitIn wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Fear of Death, #KEYS
128:Impassive, I bear each act and thought and mood:Time traverses my hushed infinitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Cosmic Spirit, #KEYS
129:Not alone the mind in its troubleGod beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
130:Strength men desire in their masters;All men worship success and in failure and weakness abandon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
131:An animal creature wonderfully human,A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.6.09 - Despair on the Staircase, #KEYS
132:Unborn I sit, timeless, intangible:All things are shadows in my tranquil glass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Indwelling Universal, #KEYS
133:As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Silver Call, #KEYS
134:A Witness dwells within our secrecies,The incarnate Godhead in the body of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
135:Space is a bar twixt our ankles,Time is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
136:Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
137:In this rude combat with the fate of manThy smile within my heart makes all my strength; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.18 - The Divine Worker, #KEYS
138:O Thou who climb’dst to mind from the dull stone,Face now the miracled summits still unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Evolution - II, #KEYS
139:A death that eats and eating is devoured,This is the brutal image of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
140:Kama (Desire)My desireTakes many forms; I change and wheel and race,And with Me runs creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Kama, #KEYS
141:Life only is, or death is life disguised,—Life a short death until by life we are surprised. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.17 - Life and Death, #KEYS
142:Like common men he lived to whom the rayOf a new sun but brings another dayUnmeaning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Khaled of the Sea, #KEYS
143:My mind has left its prison-camp of brain;It pours, a luminous sea from spirit heights. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Inner Sovereign, #KEYS
144:My vast transcendence holds the cosmic whirl;I am hid in it as in the sea a pearl. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Indwelling Universal, #KEYS
145:To perish is better for man or for nationNobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
146:Still by slow steps the miracle goes on,The Immortal’s gradual birth mid mire and stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Miracle of Birth, #KEYS
147:Yet is the dark Inconscient whence came allThe self-same Power that shines on high unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man of the Mediator, #KEYS
148:Yet is the dark Inconscient whence came allThe self-same Power that shines on high unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man of the Mediator, #KEYS
149:I am the light in stars, of flowersThe bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervadesCreation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
150:Aspiring to godhead from insensible clayHe travels slow-footed towards the eternal day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man the Thinking Animal, #KEYS
151:Busy our hearts are weaving thoughts and images always:After their kind they see what here we call truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
152:Morning has pleasure, noon has golden peaceAnd afternoon repose and eve the heart’s increase. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
153:Not in this living netOf flesh and nerve, nor in the flickering mindIs a man’s manhood seated. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
154:This world behind is made of truer stuff Than the manufactured tissue of earth’s grace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.69 - The Inner Fields, #KEYS
155:Light, burning Light from the Infinite’s diamond heartQuivers in my heart where blooms the deathless rose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Light, #KEYS
156:He sowed the desert with ruddy-hearted rose,The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Bankim Chandra Chatterji, #KEYS
157:The high gods watch in their silence,Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
158:I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,Yet still am one with born and unborn things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
159:Only the illimitable Permanent Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still, Replaces all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Nirvana, #KEYS
160:I would hear, in my spirit’s wideness solitary, The Voice that speaks when mortal lips are mute: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.28 - The Greater Plan, #KEYS
161:Action Human and DivineKeep only my soul to adore eternallyAnd meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.2.07 - Surrender, #KEYS
162:Gesture (Mudra)I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.Time is my drama or my pageant dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Divinization of Matter: Lurianic Kabbalah, Physics, and the Supramental Transformation, #KEYS
163:Not by a little pain and not by a temperate labourTrained is the nation chosen by Zeus for a dateless dominion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
164:Summer has pleasant comrades, happy meetingsOf lily and rose and from the trees divinest greetings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
165:This is our human destiny; every moment of livingToil and loss have gained in the constant siege of our bodies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
166:All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accompliceWhen like a god he wills without remorse or longing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
167:Only on the heart’s veiled door the word of flameIs written, the secret and tremendous Name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
168:When youth has quenched its soft and magic light,Delightful things remain but dead is their delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
169:Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
170:The One devised innumerably to be;His oneness in invisible forms he hides,Time’s tiny temples to eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Electron, #KEYS
171:O Life, thy breath is but a cry to the LightImmortal, whence has come thy swift delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems O Life, #KEYS
172:Always our voices are prompted to speech for an end that we know not,Always we think that we drive, but are driven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
173:No thought is vain; our very dreamsSubstantial are;The light we see in fancy, yonder gleamsIn the star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
174:A sole thing the GodsDemand from all men living, sacrifice:Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
175:Conscious dimly of births unfinished hid in our beingRest we cannot; a world cries in us for space and for fullness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
176:Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
177:Power is divine; divinest of all is power over mortals.Power then the conqueror seeks and power the imperial nation, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
178:What we call sin, Is but man’s leavings as from deep withinThe Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.24 - In the Moonlight, #KEYS
179:Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
180:Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
181:Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,Chased the delights that wound. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
182:The thoughts of unknown minds exalt me with their thrill;I carry the sorrow of millions in my lonely breast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Cosmic Man, #KEYS
183:He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles:Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
184:He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles:Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
185:Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,Yet sitst above,Master of all who work and rule and know,Servant of Love! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems God, #KEYS
186:Thought could not think in him, flesh could not quiver; The feet of Time could not adventure here ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Yogi on the Whirlpool, #KEYS
187:All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
188:Man over woman, woman o’er man, over lover and foemanWrestling we strive to expand in our souls, to be wide, to be happy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
189:Something watches behind, Spirit or Self or Soul,Viewing Space and its toil, waiting the end of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Witness and the Wheel, #KEYS
190:The vault of heavenIs not a true similitude for manWhose space outgyres thought’s last horizon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
191:World-rhythmsThrough glimmering veils of wonder and delightWorld after world bursts on the awakened sight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.2.03 - The Other Earths, #KEYS
192:Even as death shall gather us all for memory’s clusters,All in their day who were great or were little, heroes or cowards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
193:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
194:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
195:Man on whom the World-Unity shall seize,Widening his soul-spark to an epiphanyOf the timeless vastness of Infinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Electron, #KEYS
196:Men live like stars that see each other in heaven,But one knows not the pleasure and the griefThe others feel ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
197:Easily nations bow to a yoke when their virtue relaxes;Hard is the breaking fetters once worn, for the virtue has perished. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
198:Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us,Luminous beckoning hands in the distance invite and implore us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
199:Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying;Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
200:This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;Time and result are the gods’; with these things be not thou troubled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
201:While thou livest, perfectly fulfilThy part, conceiveEarth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,The drama His. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
202:For grief and painAre errors of the clouded soul; behindThey do not stainThe living spirit who to these is blind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
203:Non-ViolenceDeem nothing vain: through many veilsThis Spirit gleams.The dreams of God are truths and He prevails. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
204:Occult masters of destiny,They who sit in the SecrecyAnd watch unmoved everUnto the end of all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Winged with Dangerous Deity, #KEYS
205:Great men and deathSuch puissance great well-poisèd natures proveTo mould to their own likeness all they love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Khaled of the Sea, #KEYS
206:In the hard reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at evenPain is the ransom we pay for the smallest foretaste of heaven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
207:Light, brooding Light! each smitten passionate cellIn a mute blaze of ecstasy preservesA living sense of the Imperishable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Light, #KEYS
208:Always a few will be left whom the threatenings of Fate cannot conquer,Always souls are born whose courage waits not on fortune ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
209:Always a few will be left whom the threatenings of Fate cannot conquer,Always souls are born whose courage waits not on fortune ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
210:Hear its cry when God’s moment changing our fate comes visoredSilently into our lives and the spirit too knows, for it watches. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
211:Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
212:Life with her wine-cup of longing under the purple of her tenture,Death as her gate of escape and rebirth and renewal of venture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
213:Souls that are true to themselves are immortal; the soulless for everLingers helpless in Hades a shade among shades disappointed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
214:Atom and molecule in their unseen planButtress an edifice of strange onenesses,Crystal and plant, insect and beast and man, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Electron, #KEYS
215:One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudencePatient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
216:Only of one thingMan can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:This too is Fate and this too the gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
217:Destiny’s lasso, its slip-knot tied by delight and repining,Draws us through tangles of failure and victory’s inextricable twining. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
218:Earth has beatitudes warmer than heaven’s that are bare and undying,Marvels of Time on the crest of the moments to Infinity flying. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
219:Of rapturous Love,The bright epiphany whom we name God,Towards whom we droveIn spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
220:On the safe landTo linger is to lose what God has planned For man’s wide soul,Who set eternal godhead for its goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.08 - To the Sea, #KEYS
221:Yet was the battle decreed for the means supreme of the mortalPlaced in a world where all things strive from the worm to the Titan. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
222:And this the reason of his high unease, Because he came from the infinitiesTo build immortally with mortal things; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.24 - In the Moonlight, #KEYS
223:Life in my limbs shall grow deathless, flesh with the God-glory tingle,Lustre of Paradise, light of the earth-ways marry and mingle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
224:O Life, thy breath is but a cry to the LightImmortal, whence has come thy swift delight, Thy grasp. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems O Life, #KEYS
225:We must pass through the aeons; Space is a bar twixt our ankles,Time is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
226:Charmed men applaud the skilful purpose, the dexterous speaker;This they forget that a Force decides, not the wiles of the statesman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
227:Dear are the halls of our childhood, dear are the fields of our fathers,Yet to the soul that is free no spot on the earth is an exile. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
228:This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgingsTravails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
229:Hard is the way to the Eternal for the mind-born will of the mortalBound by the body and life to the gait of the house-burdened turtle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
230:Hid in our hearts is his glory; the Spirit works in our members.Silence is he, with our voices he speaks, in our thoughts he remembers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
231:One is there only, apart in his greatness, the End and Beginning,—He who has sent through his soul’s wide spaces the universe spinning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
232:Blood and grief are the ransom of men for the joys of their transience,For we are mortals bound in our strength and beset in our labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
233:Strange, remote and splendidChildhood’s fancy pureThrills to thoughts we cannot fathom,Quick felicities obscure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A Child’s Imagination, #KEYS
234:I am that Madan who inform the starsWith lustre and on life’s wide canvas fillPictures of light and shade, of joy and tears. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
235:None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
236:Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrowIf by her heart’s toil a loan-light of joy from the heavens she can borrow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
237:There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
238:Dread not the ruin, fear not the storm-blast, yield not, O Trojans.Zeus shall rebuild. Death ends not our days, the fire shall not triumph. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
239:Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not on the cry of the legionsFounds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
240:Gods change not their strength, but are of oldAnd as of old, and man, though less than these,May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Urvasie, #KEYS
241:Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us alwaysDrives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
242:Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
243:Easy is the love that lastsOnly with favours in the shopman heart!Who, smitten, takes and gives the kiss, he loves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
244:This grey hour was bornFor the ascetic in his silent caveAnd for the dying man whose heart releasedLoosens its vibrant strings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Chitrangada, #KEYS
245:Man, by experience of passion purged,His myriad faculty perfecting, widensHis nature as it rises till it growsWith God conterminous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Urvasie, #KEYS
246:Always man’s Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then ‘tis graven, ‘tis granite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
247:We, too, by the Eternal Might are ledTo whatsoever goal He wills.Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspreadHis strong breath fills. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems To R., #KEYS
248:Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,Spirit immortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems the Ascent, #KEYS
249:He who would bring the heavens hereMust descend himself into clayAnd the burden of earthly nature bearAnd tread the dolorous way. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A God’s Labour, #KEYS
250:Sin exaltedSeizes secure on the thrones of the world for her glorious portion,Down to the bottomless pit the good man is thrust in his virtue. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
251:And all man’s ghastly company of fearsAre born of folly that believes this spanOf brittle life can limit immortal man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems To Weep because a Glorious Sun, #KEYS
252:The Truth of truths men fear and deny,The Light of lights they refuse;To ignorant gods they lift their cryOr a demon altar choose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A God’s Labour, #KEYS
253:A tree beside the sandy river-beachHolds up its topmost boughsLike fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,Earth-bound, heaven-amorous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.07 - A Tree, #KEYS
254:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight, My body is God’s happy living tool, My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Divinization of Matter: Lurianic Kabbalah, Physics, and the Supramental Transformation, #KEYS
255:Is not the world his disguise? when that cloak is tossed back from his shoulders,Beauty looks out like a sun on the hearts of the ravished beholders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
256:Vain, they have said, is the anguish of man and his labour diurnal,Vainly his caravans cross through the desert of Time to the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Vain, #KEYS
257:In some faint dawn,In some dim eve, Like a gesture of Light, Like a dream of delightThou com’st nearer and nearer to me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems In Some Faint Dawn, #KEYS
258:Thick and persistent the night confronts all his luminous longings;Dire death’s sickle mows like a harvest his hosts and his throngings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Vain, #KEYS
259:Wilt thou not perfect this rather that sprang too from Wisdom and Power?Taking the earthly rose canst thou image not Heaven in a flower? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
260:My mind is awake in stirless trance,Hushed my heart, a burden of delight;Dispelled is the senses’ flicker-dance,Mute the body aureate with light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Trance, #KEYS
261:Around me was a formless solitude:All had become one strange Unnameable,An unborn sole Reality world-nude,Topless and fathomless, for ever still. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Adwaita, #KEYS
262:Confident of His grace, expect His will;Let Him lead; though hidden be the bourne,See Him in all that happens; that fulfilFor which thou wert born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems To R., #KEYS
263:fools! whose prideAbsurd the gods permit a little spaceTo please their souls with laughter, then replaceIn the loud limbo of futilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Lines on Ireland, #KEYS
264:Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell,The storms that thunder, winds that sweep;Always our Captain holds the rudder well,He does not sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems To R., #KEYS
265:Time is a strong convention; future and presentWere living in the past;They are one image that our wills complaisantInto three schemes have cast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.15 - Rebirth, #KEYS
266:Lo, all these peoples and who was it fashioned them? Who is unwillingStill to have done with it? laughs beyond pain and saves in the killing? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
267:Our souls and heaven are of an equal statureAnd have a dateless birth;The unending seed, the infinite mould of Nature,They were not made on earth, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.15 - Rebirth, #KEYS
268:Summer is dead and rich reposeAnd springtide and the rose,And woods and all sweet things make moan;The weeping earth is turned to stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
269:Man worships the ungrasped. His vagrant thoughtStill busy with the illimitable voidLives all the time by little things upbuoyedWhich he contemns ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Euphrosyne, #KEYS
270:Noble be in peace, invincible, brave in the battle,Stern and calm to thy foe, to the suppliant merciful. MortalFavour and wrath as thou walkst heed never ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
271:I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s nightTo bring the fire to man;But the hate of hell and human spiteAre my meed since the world began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A God’s Labour, #KEYS
272:Still, still we can hear themNow, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
273:On the white summit of eternity A single Soul of bare infinities, Guarded he keeps by a fire-screen of peaceHis mystic loneliness of nude ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.33 - Shiva, #KEYS
274:Therefore is the woman’s partNearest divine, who to one motion keepsAnd like the fixed immortal planets’ roundIs constant to herself in him she loves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Uloupie, #KEYS
275:Form in its heart of silence recondite Hides the significance of His mystery, Form is the wonder-house of eternity,A cavern of the deathless Eremite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.65 - Form, #KEYS
276:Yama, the strong pure Hades sad and subtle,Dharma, who keeps the laws of old untouched,Critanta, who ends all things and at lastHimself shall end. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
277:Temple-groundMan, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature’s abysms!Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
278:A king of greatness and a slave of love,Host of the stars and guest in Nature’s inn,A high spectator spirit throned above,A pawn of passion in the game divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.37 - Lila, #KEYS
279:Even in the worm is a god and it writhes for a form and an outlet.Workings immortal obscurely struggling, hints of a godheadLabour to form in this clay a divinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
280:All is not finished in the unseen decree;A Mind beyond our mind demands our ken,A life of unimagined harmonyAwaits, concealed, the grasp of unborn men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Evolution - II, #KEYS
281:He is in me, round me, facing everywhere.Self-walled in ego to exclude His right,I stand upon its boundaries and stareInto the frontiers of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.56 - Omnipresence, #KEYS
282:Let the little troubled life-god withinCast his veils from the still soul,His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,His clamour and glamour and thole and dole ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Musa Spiritus, #KEYS
283:Wise are the gods in their silence,Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdomHard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
284:I shall not die. Although this body, when the spirit tires Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires,My house consumes, not I. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.16 - The Triumph-Song of Trishuncou, #KEYS
285:Fate severe like a motherTeaches our wills by disaster and strikes down the props that would weaken,Fate and the Thought on high that is wiser than yearnings of mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
286:I have broken the limits of embodied mindAnd am no more the figure of a soul.The burning galaxies are in me outlined;The universe is my stupendous whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Cosmic Spirit, #KEYS
287:I have escaped and the small self is dead;I am immortal, alone, ineffable;I have gone out from the universe I made,And have grown nameless and immeasurable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Liberation - I, #KEYS
288:I have given my mind to be dug Thy channel mind,I have offered up my will to be Thy will:Let nothing of myself be left behindIn our union mystic and unutterable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.2.07 - Surrender, #KEYS
289:Fools or hypocrites! Meanest falsehood is this among mortals,Veils of purity weaving, names misplacing idealWhen our desires we disguise and paint the lusts of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
290:He is not anything, yet all is He;He is not all but far exceeds that scope.Both Time and Timelessness sink in that sea:Time is a wave and Space a wandering drop. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.19 - Parabrahman, #KEYS
291:Wast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beautyMove like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy dutyGraved in thy heart as on tablets of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
292:And high Delight, a spirit infinite,That is the fountain of this glorious world,Delight that labours in its opposite,Faints in the rose and on the rack is curled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.19 - Parabrahman, #KEYS
293:There are two beings in my single self.A Godhead watches Nature from behindAt play in front with a brilliant surface elf,A time-born creature with a human mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Dual Being, #KEYS
294:A life of intensities wide, immuneFloats behind the earth and her life-fret,A magic of realms mastered by spell and rune,Grandiose, blissful, coloured, increate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Life Heavens, #KEYS
295:All is abolished but the mute Alone. The mind from thought released, the heart from grief Grow inexistent now beyond belief;There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Nirvana, #KEYS
296:It is Thy rapture flaming through my nervesAnd all my cells and atoms thrill with Thee;My body Thy vessel is and only servesAs a living wine-cup of Thy ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Bliss of Identity, #KEYS
297:He must stride on conquering all,Threatening and clamouring, brutal, invincible,Until he meets upon his storm-swept roadA greater devil—or thunderstroke of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Dwarf Napoleon, #KEYS
298:Identified with silence and boundlessnessMy spirit widens clasping the universe Till all that seemed becomes the Real, One in a mighty and single vastness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Ocean Oneness, #KEYS
299:Some huge somnambulist IntelligenceDevising without thought process and planArrayed the burning stars’ magnificence,The living bodies of beasts and the brain of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Inconscient, #KEYS
300:I housed within my heart the life of things,All hearts athrob in the world I felt as mine;I shared the joy that in creation singsAnd drank its sorrow like a poignant wine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Life-Unity, #KEYS
301:Life and mind and their glory and debateAre the slow prelude of a vaster theme, A sketch confused of a supernal plan, A preface to the epic of the Supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.28 - The Greater Plan, #KEYS
302:now I listen to a greater WordBorn from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:The Voice that only Silence’ ear has heardLeaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Word of the Silence, #KEYS
303:There is a silence greater than any knownTo earth’s dumb spirit, motionless in the soul That has become Eternity’s foothold, Touched by the infinitudes for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Jivanmukta, #KEYS
304:My mind is hushed in wide and endless light,My heart a solitude of delight and peace,My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight,My body a point in white infinities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Liberation - I, #KEYS
305:Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;White birds on the ocean diving and wandering; A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven, Azure on azure, is mutely gazing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Ocean Oneness, #KEYS
306:The Friend of Man helps him with life and deathUntil he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.He feels the joy of the immortal play; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 4.2.04 - Epiphany, #KEYS
307:Who art thou in the heart comrade of man who sitstAugust, watching his works, watching his joys and griefs,Unmoved, careless of pain, careless of death and fate? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Witness and the Wheel, #KEYS
308:A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,A world of sight clear and inimitable,A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,A greatness pure of thought, virgin of will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Word of the Silence, #KEYS
309:One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
310:Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
311: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man the Thinking Animal, #KEYS
312:Two genii in the dubious heart of man, Two great unhappy foes together bound Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground;They strive for ever since the race began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.24 - In the Moonlight, #KEYS
313:I saw my soul a traveller through Time;From life to life the cosmic ways it trod,Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime,Evolving from the worm into the god. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Miracle of Birth, #KEYS
314:Love and the need of mastery, joy and the longing for greatnessRage like a fire unquenchable burning the world and creating,Nor till humanity dies will they sink in the ashes of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
315:One, universal, ensphering creation,Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,Feel thyself God-born, know thyself deathless.Timeless return to thy immortal existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Soul in the Ignorance, #KEYS
316:The crude beginnings of the lifeless earth,The mindless stirrings of the plant and treePrepared our thought; thought for a godlike birthBroadens the mould of our mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Evolution - II, #KEYS
317:This mute stupendous Energy that whirlsThe stars and nebulae in its long train,Like a huge Serpent through my being curlsWith its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Witness Spirit, #KEYS
318:This mute stupendous Energy that whirlsThe stars and nebulae in its long train,Like a huge Serpent through my being curlsWith its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Witness Spirit, #KEYS
319:We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,Waves of that sea:From Him we come, to Him we go, desireEternally,And so long as He wills, our separate birthIs and shall be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
320:All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice,Music and thunder and the cry of birds,Life’s babble of her sorrows and her joys,Cadence of human speech and murmured words, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Divine Hearing, #KEYS
321:In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages,Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinkerHe is throned in His seats that for ever endure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
322:That is our home and that the secret hopeOur hearts explore.To bring those heavens down upon the earthWe all descend,And fragments of it in the human birthWe can command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
323:Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globeGold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeballFlaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
324:Although consenting here to a mortal body,He is the Undying; limit and bond he knows not; For him the aeons are a playground, Life and its deeds are his splendid shadow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Jivanmukta, #KEYS
325:I have wrapped the wide world in my wider selfAnd Time and Space my spirit’s seeing are.I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,I am the wind’s speed and the blazing star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
326:The Master who bends o’er His creatures,Suffers their sins and their errors and guides them screening the guidance;Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
327:All music is only the sound of His laughter,All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss;Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridalOf Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
328:My life is the life of village and continent,I am earth’s agony and her throbs of bliss;I share all creatures’ sorrow and contentAnd feel the passage of every stab and kiss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Cosmic Spirit, #KEYS
329:No danger can perturb my spirit’s calm:My acts are Thine; I do Thy works and pass;Failure is cradled on Thy deathless arm,Victory is Thy passage mirrored in Fortune’s glass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.18 - The Divine Worker, #KEYS
330:Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Soul in the Ignorance, #KEYS
331:Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,Fear not to enjoy;For Death’s a passage, grief a fancied thingFools to annoy.From self escape and find in love aloneA higher joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.23 - The Rishi, #KEYS
332:My soul’s wide self of living infinite SpaceOutlines its body luminous and unborn Behind the earth-robe; under the earth-mask grows clear The mould of an imperishable face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Conscious Immortality, #KEYS
333:My soul’s wide self of living infinite SpaceOutlines its body luminous and unborn Behind the earth-robe; under the earth-mask grows clear The mould of an imperishable face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Conscious Immortality, #KEYS
334:I know, O God, the day shall dawn at lastWhen man shall rise from playing with the mudAnd taking in his hands the sun and starsRemould appearance, law and process old. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
335:Two are the ends of existence, two are the dreams of the Mother:Heaven unchanging, earth with her time-beats yearn to each other,—Earth-souls needing the touch of the heavens peace to recapture ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
336:Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,Our strength a parody of the Immortal’s power,Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal’s wayHunting the unseizable beauty of an hour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
337:There is a joy behind suffering; pain digs our road to his pleasance.All things have bliss for their secret; only our consciousness faltersFearing to offer itself as a victim on ecstasy’s altars. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
338:Who shall foretell the event of a battle, the fall of a footstep?Oracles, visions and prophecies voice but the dreams of the mortal,And ‘tis our spirit within is the Pythoness tortured in Delphi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
339:Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnightTreading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
340:There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun,A Bliss in the heart’s crypt grown fiery white,The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,A Silence on the mountains of delight, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.29 - The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
341:Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
342:Mortals, your end is beatitude, rapture eternal his meaning:Joy, which he most now denies, is his purpose: the hedges, the screeningWere but the rules of his play; his denials came to lure farther. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
343:I dwell in the spirit’s calm nothing can moveAnd watch the actions of Thy vast world-force,Its mighty wings that through infinity moveAnd the Time-gallopings of the deathless Horse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Witness Spirit, #KEYS
344: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Man the Thinking Animal, #KEYS
345:Yet in the midst of our labour and weeping not utterly lonelyWander our steps, nor are terror and grief our portion only.Do we not hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
346:Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit,Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changelessFar beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
347:How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
348:Our souls travelling different paths have met in the agesEach for its work and they cling for an hour to the names of affection,Then Time’s long waves bear them apart for new forms we shall know not, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
349:Self-GivingHateful I hold him who sworn to a cause that is holy and commonBroods upon private wrongs or serving his lonely ambitionStudies to reap his gain from the labour and woe of his fellows. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
350:Dead is the past; the void has possessed it; its drama is ended,Finished its music. The future is dim and remote from our knowledge;Silent it lies on the knees of the gods in their luminous stillness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
351:All eyes that look on me are my sole eyes;The one heart that beats within all breasts is mine.The world’s happiness flows through me like wine,Its million sorrows are my agonies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Indwelling Universal, #KEYS
352:Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed that’s forgotten;Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
353:Moved man’s tongue in its wrath looses speech that is hard to be pardoned,Afterwards stilled we regret, we forgive. If all were resented,None could live on this earth that is thick with our stumblings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
354:Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our motherAnd we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
355:He is lost in the heart, in the cavern of Nature,He is found in the brain where He builds up the thought:In the pattern and bloom of the flowers He is woven,In the luminous net of the stars He is caught. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 3.1.02 - Who, #KEYS
356:Oneness unknown to us dwells in these millions of figures and faces,Wars with itself in our battles, loves in our clinging embraces,Inly the self and the substance of things and their cause and their mover ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
357:This iron, brute, gigantic helpless toyThey call a world, this thing that turns and turnsAnd shrieks and bleeds and cannot stop, this victimBroken and living yet on its own wheel, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
358:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurringsSoon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
359:Into this life which the sunlight bounds and the greenness has cradled,Armed with strength we have come; as our strength is, so is our joyance.What but for joyance is birth and what but for joyance is living? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
360:Leave to the gods their godhead and, mortal, turn to thy labour;Take what thou canst from the hour that is thine and be fearless in spirit;This is the greatness of man and the joy of his stay in the sunlight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
361:Near to the quiet truth of things we standIn this grey moment. Neither happy lightNor joyful sound deceives the listening heart,Nor Night inarms, the Mother brooding vast,To comfort us with sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Chitrangada, #KEYS
362:The gods have inventedOnly one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
363:Has put the stars out ere the light,And from their dewy cushions riseSweet flowers half-opening their eyes.O pleasant then to feel as if new-bornThe sweet, unripe and virgin air, the air of morn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
364:What though ‘tis true that the river of Life through the Valley of PerilFlows! But the diamond shines on the cliffside, jacinth and berylGleam in the crannies, sapphire, smaragdus the roadway bejewel, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
365:Out and alas! earth’s greatest are earth and they fail in the testing,Conquered by sorrow and doubt, fate’s hammerers, fires of her furnace.God in their souls they renounce and submit to their clay and its promptings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
366:My heart shall throb with the world-beats of Thy love,My body become Thy engine for earth-use;In my nerves and veins Thy rapture’s streams shall move;My thoughts shall be hounds of Light for Thy power to loose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 1.2.07 - Surrender, #KEYS
367:To heal the evils and mistakes of SpaceAnd change the tragedy of the ignorant worldInto a Divine Comedy of joyAnd the laughter and the rapture of God’s bliss.The Mother of God is mother of our souls ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.6.12 - The Mother of God, #KEYS
368:Transient, we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashionedValiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkingsFormed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
369:Soul, my soul Soul, my soul, yet ascend crossing the marge of life: Mount out far above Time, reach to the golden end ... Live there lost in God space, rapturous, vacant, mute, Sun-bright, timeless, immense, single and absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
370:Who can point out the way of the gods and the path of their travel,Who shall impose on them bounds and an orbit? The winds have their treading,–They can be followed and seized, not the gods when they move towards their purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
371:Perhaps the heart of God for ever singsAnd worlds come throbbing out from every note;Perhaps His soul sits ever calm and stillAnd listens to the music rapturously,Himself adoring, by Himself adored. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #KEYS
372:Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed themEagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blindedMeant for their steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
373:Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have labouredPutting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
374:Such were a dream of some sage at night when he muses in fancy,Imaging freely a flawless world where none were afflicted,No man inferior, all could sublimely equal and brothersLive in a peace divine like the gods in their luminous regions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
375:All things are subject to sweet pleasure,But three things keep her richest measure,The breeze that visits heavenAnd knows the planets seven,The green spring with its flowery truthCreative and the luminous heart of youth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
376:God:::Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,Yet sitst above,Master of all who work and rule and know,Servant of Love!Thou who disdainest not the worm to beNor even the clod,Therefore we know by that humilityThat thou art God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
377:The knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the sensesTreading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
378:All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wideSowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for,Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoymentsWeaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
379:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurringsSoon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.This by pain we prevent; we compel his ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
380:Men must sow earth with their hearts and their tears that their country may prosper;Earth who bore and devours us that life may be born from our remnants.Then shall the Sacrifice gather its fruits when the war-shout is silent,Nor shall the blood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
381:Only one doom irreparable treads down the soul of a nation,Only one downfall endures; ‘tis the ruin of greatness and virtue,Mourning when Freedom departs from the life and the heart of a people,Into her room comes creeping the mind of the slave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
382:Then if the tempest be loud and the thunderbolt leaping incessantShatters the roof, if the lintels flame at last and each corniceShrieks with the pain of the blast, if the very pillars totter,Keep yet your faith in Zeus, hold fast to the word of ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
383:All whose eyes can pierce that curtain, gaze into dimness;This they have glimpsed and that they imagine deceived by their naturesSeeing the forms in their hearts of dreadful things and of joyous;As in the darkness our eyes are deceived by shadows ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
384:Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinkingLeft to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matterShe would go glad and the goal would be missed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
385:Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkingsGod we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,—Justice and Virtue, her sister,—for where is justice mid creaturesPerfectly? Even the gods are betrayed by o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
386:Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,Labour blind and vain expense and sacr ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
387:This is the burden of man that he acts from his heart and his passions,Stung by the goads of the gods he hews at the ties that are dearest.Lust was the guide they sent us, wrath was a whip for his coursers,Madness they made the heart’s comrade, r ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
388:This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit nor for failure,Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.Light that they hav ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
389:Vainly the divine whispers seek us; the heights are rejected.Man to his earth drawn always prefers his nethermost promptings,Man, devouring, devoured who is slayer and slain through the agesSince by the beast he soars held and exceeds not that pe ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
390:What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victorBoons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe and the stranger,Fallen from the virtue stern that heaven permits to a mortal?Death is not keener than this nor the slaughter of f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
391:Who among men has not thoughts that he holds for the wisest, though foolish?Who, though feeble and nought, esteems not his strength o’er his fellow’s?Therefore the wisest and strongest choose out a king and a leader,Not as a perfect arbiter armed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
392:Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destinedL ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
393:He who a god for his kindred,Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empireHolds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battleCare ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
394:His flute with its sweetness ensnaringSounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baringHales us out naked and absolute, out to his woodlands eternal,Out to his moonlit dances, his dalliance sweet and supernal,And we go st ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
395:In earth’s rhythm of shadow and sunlightStorm is the dance of the locks of the God assenting to greatness,Zeus who with secret compulsion orders the ways of our nature;Veiled in events he lives and working disguised in the mortalBuilds our str ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
396:Man who has toweredOut of the plasm and struggled by thought to Divinity’s level,Man, this miniature second creator of good and of evil,He too was only a compost of Matter made living, organic,Forged as her thinking tool by an Energy blind and ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
397:Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;S ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
398:Though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.For by our nation’s will we are ruled in the home and the battleAn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
399:Stood visible, Titanic, scarlet-clad,Dark as a thunder-cloud, with streaming hairObscuring heaven, and in her sovran graspThe sword, the flower, the boon, the bleeding head,—Bhavani. Then she vanished; the daylightWas ordinary in a common w ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
400:God's TreadOnce we have chosen to be as the gods, we must follow that motion.Knowledge must grow in us, might like a Titan’s, bliss like an ocean,Calmness and purity born of the spirit’s gaze on the Real,Rapture of his oneness embracing the soul in a clasp ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.02 - Ahana, #KEYS
401:Time in its cycles waited for man. Though his kingdom is ended,Here in a speck mid the suns and his life is a throb in the aeons,Yet, O you Titans and Gods, O Rudras, O strong Aditeians,Man is the centre and knot; he is first, though the last in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
402:World-destiny waits upon that foaming lip.A Titan Power upholds this pigmy man,The crude dwarf instrument of a mighty Force.Hater of the free spirit’s joy and light,Made only of strength and skill and giant might,A Will to trample humanity ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Dwarf Napoleon, #KEYS
403:Always the wide-pacing river of Life from its far-off fountainsFlows down mighty and broad, like a warhorse brought from its mangerArching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges of danger.Sometimes we hesitate, often start and would turn from t ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
404:Napoleon’s mind was swift and bold and vast,His heart was calm and stormy like the sea,His will dynamic in its grip and clasp.His eye could hold a world within its graspAnd see the great and small things sovereignly.A movement of gigantic d ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Dwarf Napoleon, #KEYS
405:Now I have done with space and my soul is released from the hours.Saved is my heart from the need of joy, the attraction to sorrow,Who have escaped from my past and forgotten today and tomorrow;I have grown vacant and mighty, naked and wide as th ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #KEYS
406:A Tree ::: A tree beside the sandy river-beach Holds up its topmost boughs Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach, Earth-bound, heaven amorous. This is the soul of man. Body and brain Hungry for earth our heavenly flight detain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
407:Mother-EarthWho but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madmanLeaves for the far and ungrasped earth’s close and provident labour?Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,Step by step to advance on her bosom, to g ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
408:Suffering is the food of our strength and torture the bliss of our entrails.We are pitiless, mighty and glad, the gods fear our laughter inhuman.Our hearts are heroic and hard; we wear the belt of Orion:Our will has the edge of the thunderbolt, o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Children of Wotan, #KEYS
409:We are the javelins of Destiny, we are the children of Wotan,We are the human Titans, the supermen dreamed by the sage.A cross of the beast and demoniac with the godhead of power and will,We were born in humanity’s sunset, to the Night is our pil ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems The Children of Wotan, #KEYS
410:Earth-MemoryThe earth is safer, warmer its sunbeams;Death and limits are known; so he clings to them hating the summons.So might one dwell who has come to take joy in a fair-lighted prison;Amorous grown of its marble walls and its noble adornments,Lost to ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
411:I walk by the chill wave through the dull slimeAnd still that weary journeying knows no end;Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,There comes no voice of the celestial Friend.And yet I know my footprints’ track shall beA pathway towards I ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 7.5.21 - The Pilgrim of the Night, #KEYS
412:He tore desire up from its bleeding rootsAnd offered to the gods the vacant place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion, #KEYS
413:All opposition seems and strife and chance,An aimless labour with but scanty sense,To eyes that see a part and miss the whole; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems Songs to Myrtilla, #KEYS
414:Bride of the Fire ::: Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close, -Bride of the Fire!I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose,I have slain desire.Beauty of the Light, surround my life, -Beauty of the Light!I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief,I can bear thy delight.Image of Ecstasy, thrill and enlace, -Image of Bliss!I would see only thy marvellous face,Feel only thy kiss.Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -Call of the One!Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,O living sun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
415:Krishna:::At last I find a meaning of soul's birthInto this universe terrible and sweet,I who have felt the hungry heart of earthAspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.I have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,And known a deathless ecstasy's surpriseAnd sorrow in my heart for ever mute.Nearer and nearer now the music draws,Life shudders with a strange felicity;All Nature is a wide enamoured pauseHoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.For this one moment lived the ages past;The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
416:The Golden Light ::: Thy golden Light came down into my brainAnd the grey rooms of mind sun-touched becameA bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,A calm illumination and a flame.Thy golden Light came down into my throat,And all my speech is now a tune divine,A paean-song of Thee my single note;My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.Thy golden Light came down into my heartSmiting my life with Thy eternity;Now has it grown a temple where Thou artAnd all its passions point towards only Thee.Thy golden Light came down into my feet,My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
417:The Silver Call There is a godhead of unrealised things To which Time's splendid gains are hoarded dross; A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss. All eye has seen and all the ear has heard Is a pale illusion by some greater voice And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word, No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice Can equal those diviner ecstasies. A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken Of those yet unimagined harmonies, The fate and privilege of unborn men. As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose, Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 594, #KEYS
418:I Have A Hundred Lives::: I have a hundred lives before me yetTo grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,Be sure I will with heart insatiatePursue thee like a hunter through them all.Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal wayAnd with awakened vision watch me comeSmiling a little at errors past, and layThy eager hand in mine, its proper home.Meanwhile made happy by thy happinessI shall approach thee in things and people dearAnd in thy spirit's motions half-possessLoving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,Until I lay my hands on thee indeedSomewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 180, #KEYS
419:The Divine WorkerI face earth's happenings with an equal soul;In all are heard Thy steps: Thy unseen feetTread Destiny's pathways in my front. Life's wholeTremendous theorem is Thou complete.No danger can perturb my spirit's calm:My acts are Thine; I do Thy works and pass;Failure is cradled on Thy deathless arm,Victory is Thy passage mirrored in Fortune's glass.In this rude combat with the fate of manThy smile within my heart makes all my strength;Thy Force in me labours at its grandiose plan,Indifferent to the Time-snake's crawling length.No power can slay my soul; it lives in Thee.Thy presence is my immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
420:Cosmic Consciousness ::: I have wrapped the wide world in my wider selfAnd Time and Space my spirit's seeing are.I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,I am the wind's speed and the blazing star.All Nature is the nursling of my care,I am its struggle and the eternal rest;The world's joy thrilling runs through me, I bearThe sorrow of millions in my lonely breast.I have learned a close identity with all,Yet am by nothing bound that I become;Carrying in me the universe's callI mount to my imperishable home.I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,Yet still am one with born and unborn things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
421:Because Thou Art ::: Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss, My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee; It bears thy mystic touch in all that is And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy. Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune: Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune. It loves Thy body in all living things; Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone: The moments bring thee on their fiery wings; Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone. Time voyages with Thee upon its prow And all the futures passionate hope is Thou. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
422:Invitation:::With wind and the weather beating round meUp 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 citiesCramped 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 dangerWho shares my kingdom and walks at my side. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
423:Musa Spiritus ::: O Word concealed in the upper fire, Thou who hast lingered through centuries, Descend from thy rapt white desire, Plunging through gold eternities. Into the gulfs of our nature leap, Voice of the spaces, call of the Light! Break the seals of Matter's sleep, Break the trance of the unseen height. In the uncertain glow of human mind, Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts, Carve thy epic mountain-lined Crowded with deep prophetic grots. Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds Over the swirl of the heart's sea. Touch into sight with thy fire-words The blind indwelling deity. O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice, In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice. Out, out with the mind and its candles flares, Light, light the suns that never die. For my ear the cry of the seraph stars And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye! Let the little troubled life-god within Cast his veils from the still soul, His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin, His clamour and glamour and thole and dole; All make tranquil, all make free. Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God As He comes from His timeless infinity To build in their rapture His burning abode. Weave from my life His poem of days, His calm pure dawns and His noons of force. My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race, My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
424:Mother of Dreams ::: Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems , #KEYS
425:A God's LabourI have gathered my dreams in a silver air Between the gold and the blueAnd wrapped them softly and left them there, My jewelled dreams of you.I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge Marrying the soil to the skyAnd sow in this dancing planet midge The moods of infinity.But too bright were our heavens, too far away, Too frail their ethereal stuff;Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay; The roots were not deep enough.He who would bring the heavens here Must descend himself into clayAnd the burden of earthly nature bear And tread the dolorous way.Coercing my godhead I have come down Here on the sordid earth,Ignorant, labouring, human grown Twixt the gates of death and birth.I have been digging deep and long Mid a horror of filth and mireA bed for the golden river's song, A home for the deathless fire.I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night To bring the fire to man;But the hate of hell and human spite Are my meed since the world began.For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self; Hoping its lusts to win,He harbours within him a grisly Elf Enamoured of sorrow and sin.The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame And from all things glad and pure;Only by pleasure and passion and pain His drama can endure.All around is darkness and strife; For the lamps that men call sunsAre but halfway gleams on this stumbling life Cast by the Undying Ones.Man lights his little torches of hope That lead to a failing edge;A fragment of Truth is his widest scope, An inn his pilgrimage.The Truth of truths men fear and deny, The Light of lights they refuse;To ignorant gods they lift their cry Or a demon altar choose.All that was found must again be sought, Each enemy slain revives,Each battle for ever is fought and refought Through vistas of fruitless lives.My gaping wounds are a thousand and one And the Titan kings assail,But I dare not rest till my task is done And wrought the eternal will.How they mock and sneer, both devils and men! "Thy hope is Chimera's headPainting the sky with its fiery stain; Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead."Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease And joy and golden roomTo us who are waifs on inconscient seas And bound to life's iron doom?"This earth is ours, a field of Night For our petty flickering fires.How shall it brook the sacred Light Or suffer a god's desires?"Come, let us slay him and end his course! Then shall our hearts have releaseFrom the burden and call of his glory and force And the curb of his wide white peace."But the god is there in my mortal breast Who wrestles with error and fateAnd tramples a road through mire and waste For the nameless Immaculate.A voice cried, "Go where none have gone! Dig deeper, deeper yetTill thou reach the grim foundation stone And knock at the keyless gate."I saw that a falsehood was planted deep At the very root of thingsWhere the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep On the Dragon's outspread wings.I left the surface gauds of mind And life's unsatisfied seasAnd plunged through the body's alleys blind To the nether mysteries.I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart And heard her black mass' bell.I have seen the source whence her agonies part And the inner reason of hell.Above me the dragon murmurs moan And the goblin voices flit;I have pierced the Void where Thought was born, I have walked in the bottomless pit.On a desperate stair my feet have trod Armoured with boundless peace,Bringing the fires of the splendour of God Into the human abyss.He who I am was with me still; All veils are breaking now.I have heard His voice and borne His will On my vast untroubled brow.The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged And the golden waters pourDown the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged And glimmer from shore to shore.Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth And the undying suns here burn;Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth The incarnate spirits yearnLike flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss: Down a gold-red stairway wendThe radiant children of Paradise Clarioning darkness' end.A little more and the new life's doors Shall be carved in silver lightWith its aureate roof and mosaic floors In a great world bare and bright.I shall leave my dreams in their argent air, For in a raiment of gold and blueThere shall move on the earth embodied and fair The living truth of you. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems A God's Labour, #KEYS
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:By men is mightiness achieved ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,
#NFDB
2:All that we meet is a symbol and gateway ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
3:Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
4:After ‘tis cold, none heeds, none hinders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
5:No one I am, I who am all that is. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Liberation - I,
#NFDB
6:IT was for delight
He sought existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
7:My life is a throb of Thy eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Bliss of Identity,
#NFDB
8:Beauty of our dim soul is amorous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Our godhead calls us,
#NFDB
9:Necessity rules all the infinite world, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Birth of Sin,
#NFDB
10:Man’s mind is the dupe of his animal self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God’s Labour,
#NFDB
11:I am an epitome of opposites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man, the Despot of Contraries,
#NFDB
12:And all grows beautiful because Thou art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Hearing,
#NFDB
13:All is a wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
14:My body a dot in the soul’s vast expanse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Self’s Infinity,
#NFDB
15:In my heart’s chamber lives the unworshipped God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Omnipresence,
#NFDB
16:Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
17:Necessity fashions
All that the unseen eye has beheld. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
18:The golden virgin, Usha, mother of life,
Yet virgin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
#NFDB
19:Ginsberg's Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady. ~ Thom Gunn
#NFDB
20:Deep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
21:Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Thought the Paraclete,
#NFDB
22:To our gaze God’s light is a darkness, His plan is a chaos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
23:A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
24:Alone the wise Can walk through fire with unblinking eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Epigram,
#NFDB
25:Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
26:Mind hushes stilled in eternity; waves of the Infinite wander ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
27:My life is a silence grasped by timeless hands; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Self’s Infinity,
#NFDB
28:We are the heirs of infinite widenesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Call of the Impossible,
#NFDB
29:Heavy is godhead to bear with its mighty sun-burden of lustre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
30:Heavenly voices to us are a silence, those colours a whiteness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
31:Each is a mass of forces thrown in shape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Discoveries of Science - III,
#NFDB
32:Even an hour of the soul can unveil the Unborn, the Everlasting, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
33:God still keeps
Near to a paler world the hour ere dawn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Chitrangada,
#NFDB
34:Life’s whole
Tremendous theorem is Thou complete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Worker,
#NFDB
35:There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
36:Always the blood is wiser and knows what is hid from the thinker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
37:And all the while within us works His love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
38:Hard are God’s terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
39:Is here and in the pleasant house He chose
To harbour God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
40:Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase
Form and name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
41:The sweet vast centre and the cave divine
Called Paradise, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
42:And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
43:Even in the worm is a god and it writhes for a form and an outlet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
44:He who to some gives victory, joy and good,
To some gives rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To R.,
#NFDB
45:His good and evil, sin and virtue, till
He bids thee leave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
46:Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
47:Powers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
48:Clouds from Zeus come and pass; his sunshine eternal survives them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
49:Two are the angels of God whom men worship, strength and enjoyment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
50:All things embrace in death and the strife and the hatred are ended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
51:A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth’s pain; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
52:But there is never any end when one has loved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
53:Man his passion prefers to the voice that guides from the immortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
54:You cannot utterly die while the Power lives untired in your bosoms; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
55:Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.” ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
56:Love the sign
Of one outblaze of godhead that two share. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Life Heavens,
#NFDB
57:Fearless of death they must walk who would live and be mighty for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
58:Nobler must kings be than natures of earth on whom Zeus lays no burden. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
59:Through glorious things and base the wheel of God
For ever runs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
60:Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
61:Alike ‘tis heaven,
Rule or obedience to the one heart given. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,
#NFDB
62:Yea, the soul of a man too is mighty
More than the stone and the mortar! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
63:All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A Strong Son of Lightning,
#NFDB
64:The abode
Of rapturous Love,
The bright epiphany whom we name God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
65:Thought for a godlike birth
Broadens the mould of our mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Evolution - II,
#NFDB
66:Credence, when mediocrity multiplied
Equals itself with genius. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,
#NFDB
67:The Self of things is not their outward view,
A Force within decides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Parabrahman,
#NFDB
68:Each finite is that deep Infinity
Enshrining His veiled soul of pure delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Form,
#NFDB
69:Helped are the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
70:young portress bright
Who opens to our souls the worlds of light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Fear of Death,
#NFDB
71:Easy are mortal
Hearts to be bent by Fate and soon we consent to our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
72:I move in an ocean of stupendous Light
Joining my depths to His eternal height. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Light,
#NFDB
73:This body which was once my universe,
Is now a pittance carried by the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Body,
#NFDB
74:All forms are Thy dream-dialect of delight,
O Absolute, O vivid Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Divine Sight,
#NFDB
75:Fate,
The dim great presence, is but nature made
Irrevocable in its fruits. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
#NFDB
76:Good we have made by our thoughts and sin by our fear and recoiling; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
77:Only the past fulfilled can conjure room to the future that presses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
78:Transmuted is ravishment’s minister,
A high note and a fiery refrain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Life Heavens,
#NFDB
79:A perfect face amid barbarian faces,
A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Goethe,
#NFDB
80:Bliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and death-blast and storm-race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
81:Nor punishes. Impartially he deals
To every strenuous spirit its chosen reward. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
#NFDB
82:A Silence that was Being’s only word,
The unknown beginning and the voiceless end ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Adwaita,
#NFDB
83:O worshipper of the formless Infinite,
Reject not form, what dwells in it is He. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Form,
#NFDB
84:In us the secret Spirit can indite
A page and summary of the Infinite, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Hill-top Temple,
#NFDB
85:One who has made in sport the suns and seas
Mirrors in our being his immense caprice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lila,
#NFDB
86:Rules us, who in the Brahmin and the dog
Can, if He will, show equal godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,
#NFDB
87:Keep only my soul to adore eternally
And meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Surrender,
#NFDB
88:The God of Force, the God of Love are one;
Not least He loves whom most He smites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Epiphany,
#NFDB
89:The world’s deep contrasts are but figures spun
Draping the unanimity of the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Contrasts,
#NFDB
90:A deep spiritual calm no touch can sway
Upholds the mystery of this Passion-play. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Life-Unity,
#NFDB
91:Alone of gods Death loves not gifts: he visits
The pure heart as the stained. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
92:It is the Infinite’s blind minute abode.
In that small flaming chariot Shiva rides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
#NFDB
93:It was a page he had Found in the handbook Of heartbreak. Wallace Stevens, “Madame la Fleurie,” Collected Poems I ~ Cornelia Funke
#NFDB
94:Men are fathers of their fate;
They dig the prison, they the crown command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,
#NFDB
95:All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,
Act in the world with thy being beyond it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ascent,
#NFDB
96:Our consciousness a torch that plays Between the Abyss and a supernal Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man of the Mediator,
#NFDB
97:A World-adventurer borne on Destiny’s wing
Gambles with death and triumph, joy and grief. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lila,
#NFDB
98:No power can slay my soul; it lives in Thee.
Thy presence is my immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Worker,
#NFDB
99:The Master of man and his infinite Lover,
He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
100:To whatsoever living form I turn
I see my own body with another face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Indwelling Universal,
#NFDB
101:As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,
#NFDB
102:Each finite thing I see is a façade;
From its windows looks at me the Illimitable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Omnipresence,
#NFDB
103:Hidden in an earthly garment that survives,
I am the worldless being vast and free. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Immortality,
#NFDB
104:Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Because Thou Art,
#NFDB
105:Kali (Iron Lords of Time)
Am love, am passion; I create the world.
I am the only Brahma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Kama,
#NFDB
106:Vainly man, crouched in his corner of safety, shrinks from the fatal
Lure of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
107:It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,
And into the midnight His shadow is thrown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
108:Out, out with the mind and its candle flares,
Light, light the suns that never die. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Musa Spiritus,
#NFDB
109:The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,
Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
110:The impossible is the hint of what shall be,
Mortal the door to immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Our godhead calls us,
#NFDB
111:In vain was my prison of separate body made;
His occult presence burns in every cell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Omnipresence,
#NFDB
112:The darkness was the Omnipotent’s abode,
Hood of omniscience, a blind mask of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Inconscient,
#NFDB
113:A spark of the eternal Fire, it came
To build a house in Matter for the Unborn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Miracle of Birth,
#NFDB
114:He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,
And does what Matter must or Spirit can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Enigma,
#NFDB
115:Mystic daughter of Delight,
Life, thou ecstasy,
Let the radius of thy flight
Be eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Life,
#NFDB
116:Naked my spirit from its vestures stands;
I am alone with my own self for space. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Self’s Infinity,
#NFDB
117:When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,
He was seated within it immense and alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
118:Chaff are men’s armies
Threshed by the flails of Fate; ‘tis the soul of the hero that conquers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
119:I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;
My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Life Heavens,
#NFDB
120:In the inconscient dreadful dumb Abyss
Are heard the heart-beats of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Unseen Infinite,
#NFDB
121:In the night a million stars arise
To watch us with their ancient friendly eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Perigone Prologuises,
#NFDB
122:Our body is an epitome of some Vast
That masks its presence by our humanness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Hill-top Temple,
#NFDB
123:Poet, who first with skill inspired did teach
Greatness to our divine Bengali speech. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Madhusudan Dutt,
#NFDB
124:The blue sea dances like a girl
With sapphire and with pearl
Crowning her locks. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
125:There is a need within the soul of man
The splendours of the surface never sate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
#NFDB
126:Thy golden Light came down into my feet;
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Golden Light,
#NFDB
127:Time voyages with Thee upon its prow,—
And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Because Thou Art,
#NFDB
128:Immeasurable ecstasy where Time
And Space have fainted in a swoon sublime! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
129:Death is but changing of our robes to wait
In wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Fear of Death,
#NFDB
130:Impassive, I bear each act and thought and mood:
Time traverses my hushed infinitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Spirit,
#NFDB
131:Not alone the mind in its trouble
God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
132:Strength men desire in their masters;
All men worship success and in failure and weakness abandon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
133:An animal creature wonderfully human,
A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Despair on the Staircase,
#NFDB
134:Unborn I sit, timeless, intangible:
All things are shadows in my tranquil glass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Indwelling Universal,
#NFDB
135:As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Silver Call,
#NFDB
136:A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
137:Space is a bar twixt our ankles,
Time is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
138:Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
139:In this rude combat with the fate of man
Thy smile within my heart makes all my strength; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Worker,
#NFDB
140:O Thou who climb’dst to mind from the dull stone,
Face now the miracled summits still unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Evolution - II,
#NFDB
141:A death that eats and eating is devoured,
This is the brutal image of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
142:Kama (Desire)
My desire
Takes many forms; I change and wheel and race,
And with Me runs creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Kama,
#NFDB
143:Life only is, or death is life disguised,—
Life a short death until by life we are surprised. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Life and Death,
#NFDB
144:Like common men he lived to whom the ray
Of a new sun but brings another day
Unmeaning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,
#NFDB
145:My mind has left its prison-camp of brain;
It pours, a luminous sea from spirit heights. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Inner Sovereign,
#NFDB
146:My vast transcendence holds the cosmic whirl;
I am hid in it as in the sea a pearl. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Indwelling Universal,
#NFDB
147:To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
148:Still by slow steps the miracle goes on,
The Immortal’s gradual birth mid mire and stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Miracle of Birth,
#NFDB
149:Yet is the dark Inconscient whence came all
The self-same Power that shines on high unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man of the Mediator,
#NFDB
150:I am the light in stars, of flowers
The bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervades
Creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
151:Aspiring to godhead from insensible clay
He travels slow-footed towards the eternal day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
#NFDB
152:Busy our hearts are weaving thoughts and images always:
After their kind they see what here we call truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
153:Morning has pleasure, noon has golden peace
And afternoon repose and eve the heart’s increase. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
154:Not in this living net
Of flesh and nerve, nor in the flickering mind
Is a man’s manhood seated. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,
#NFDB
155:This world behind is made of truer stuff
Than the manufactured tissue of earth’s grace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Inner Fields,
#NFDB
156:Light, burning Light from the Infinite’s diamond heart
Quivers in my heart where blooms the deathless rose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Light,
#NFDB
157:He sowed the desert with ruddy-hearted rose,
The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Bankim Chandra Chatterji,
#NFDB
158:The high gods watch in their silence,
Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
159:I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,
Yet still am one with born and unborn things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Cosmic Consciousness,
#NFDB
160:Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still,
Replaces all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Nirvana,
#NFDB
161:I would hear, in my spirit’s wideness solitary,
The Voice that speaks when mortal lips are mute: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
#NFDB
162:Action Human and Divine
Keep only my soul to adore eternally
And meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Surrender,
#NFDB
163:Gesture (Mudra)
I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.
Time is my drama or my pageant dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Transformation,
#NFDB
164:Not by a little pain and not by a temperate labour
Trained is the nation chosen by Zeus for a dateless dominion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
165:Summer has pleasant comrades, happy meetings
Of lily and rose and from the trees divinest greetings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
166:This is our human destiny; every moment of living
Toil and loss have gained in the constant siege of our bodies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
167:All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
168:Only on the heart’s veiled door the word of flame
Is written, the secret and tremendous Name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
169:When youth has quenched its soft and magic light,
Delightful things remain but dead is their delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
170:Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
171:The One devised innumerably to be;
His oneness in invisible forms he hides,
Time’s tiny temples to eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
#NFDB
172:O Life, thy breath is but a cry to the Light
Immortal, whence has come thy swift delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, O Life, thy Breath is but a Cry,
#NFDB
173:Always our voices are prompted to speech for an end that we know not,
Always we think that we drive, but are driven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
174:No thought is vain; our very dreams
Substantial are;
The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams
In the star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
175:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
176:Conscious dimly of births unfinished hid in our being
Rest we cannot; a world cries in us for space and for fullness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
177:Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;
Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
178:Power is divine; divinest of all is power over mortals.
Power then the conqueror seeks and power the imperial nation, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
179:What we call sin,
Is but man’s leavings as from deep within
The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In the Moonlight,
#NFDB
180:Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!
Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
181:Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
182:Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,
Chased the delights that wound. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
183:The thoughts of unknown minds exalt me with their thrill;
I carry the sorrow of millions in my lonely breast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Man,
#NFDB
184:He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles:
Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
185:Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,
Yet sitst above,
Master of all who work and rule and know,
Servant of Love! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, God,
#NFDB
186:Thought could not think in him, flesh could not quiver;
The feet of Time could not adventure here ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Yogi on the Whirlpool,
#NFDB
187:All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,
And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
188:Man over woman, woman o’er man, over lover and foeman
Wrestling we strive to expand in our souls, to be wide, to be happy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
189:Something watches behind, Spirit or Self or Soul,
Viewing Space and its toil, waiting the end of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness and the Wheel,
#NFDB
190:The vault of heaven
Is not a true similitude for man
Whose space outgyres thought’s last horizon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
191:World-rhythms
Through glimmering veils of wonder and delight
World after world bursts on the awakened sight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Other Earths,
#NFDB
192:Even as death shall gather us all for memory’s clusters,
All in their day who were great or were little, heroes or cowards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
193:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
194:Man on whom the World-Unity shall seize,
Widening his soul-spark to an epiphany
Of the timeless vastness of Infinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
#NFDB
195:Men live like stars that see each other in heaven,
But one knows not the pleasure and the grief
The others feel ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
196:Easily nations bow to a yoke when their virtue relaxes;
Hard is the breaking fetters once worn, for the virtue has perished. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
197:Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us,
Luminous beckoning hands in the distance invite and implore us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
198:Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying;
Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
199:This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods’; with these things be not thou troubled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
200:While thou livest, perfectly fulfil
Thy part, conceive
Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,
The drama His. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
201:For grief and pain
Are errors of the clouded soul; behind
They do not stain
The living spirit who to these is blind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
202:Non-Violence
Deem nothing vain: through many veils
This Spirit gleams.
The dreams of God are truths and He prevails. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
203:Occult masters of destiny,
They who sit in the Secrecy
And watch unmoved ever
Unto the end of all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Winged with Dangerous Deity,
#NFDB
204:Great men and death
Such puissance great well-poisèd natures prove
To mould to their own likeness all they love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,
#NFDB
205:In the hard reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even
Pain is the ransom we pay for the smallest foretaste of heaven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
206:Light, brooding Light! each smitten passionate cell
In a mute blaze of ecstasy preserves
A living sense of the Imperishable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Light,
#NFDB
207:Always a few will be left whom the threatenings of Fate cannot conquer,
Always souls are born whose courage waits not on fortune ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
208:Hear its cry when God’s moment changing our fate comes visored
Silently into our lives and the spirit too knows, for it watches. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
209:Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
210:Life with her wine-cup of longing under the purple of her tenture,
Death as her gate of escape and rebirth and renewal of venture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
211:Souls that are true to themselves are immortal; the soulless for ever
Lingers helpless in Hades a shade among shades disappointed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
212:Atom and molecule in their unseen plan
Buttress an edifice of strange onenesses,
Crystal and plant, insect and beast and man, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
#NFDB
213:One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudence
Patient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
214:Only of one thing
Man can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:
This too is Fate and this too the gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
215:Destiny’s lasso, its slip-knot tied by delight and repining,
Draws us through tangles of failure and victory’s inextricable twining. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
216:Earth has beatitudes warmer than heaven’s that are bare and undying,
Marvels of Time on the crest of the moments to Infinity flying. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
217:Of rapturous Love,
The bright epiphany whom we name God,
Towards whom we drove
In spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
218:On the safe land
To linger is to lose what God has planned
For man’s wide soul,
Who set eternal godhead for its goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To the Sea,
#NFDB
219:Yet was the battle decreed for the means supreme of the mortal
Placed in a world where all things strive from the worm to the Titan. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
220:And this the reason of his high unease,
Because he came from the infinities
To build immortally with mortal things; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In the Moonlight,
#NFDB
221:Life in my limbs shall grow deathless, flesh with the God-glory tingle,
Lustre of Paradise, light of the earth-ways marry and mingle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
222:O Life, thy breath is but a cry to the Light
Immortal, whence has come thy swift delight,
Thy grasp. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, O Life, thy Breath is but a Cry,
#NFDB
223:We must pass through the aeons; Space is a bar twixt our ankles,
Time is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
224:Charmed men applaud the skilful purpose, the dexterous speaker;
This they forget that a Force decides, not the wiles of the statesman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
225:Dear are the halls of our childhood, dear are the fields of our fathers,
Yet to the soul that is free no spot on the earth is an exile. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
226:This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings
Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
227:Hard is the way to the Eternal for the mind-born will of the mortal
Bound by the body and life to the gait of the house-burdened turtle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
228:Hid in our hearts is his glory; the Spirit works in our members.
Silence is he, with our voices he speaks, in our thoughts he remembers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
229:One is there only, apart in his greatness, the End and Beginning,—
He who has sent through his soul’s wide spaces the universe spinning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
230:Blood and grief are the ransom of men for the joys of their transience,
For we are mortals bound in our strength and beset in our labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
231:Strange, remote and splendid
Childhood’s fancy pure
Thrills to thoughts we cannot fathom,
Quick felicities obscure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A Child’s Imagination,
#NFDB
232:I am that Madan who inform the stars
With lustre and on life’s wide canvas fill
Pictures of light and shade, of joy and tears. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
233:None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
234:Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow
If by her heart’s toil a loan-light of joy from the heavens she can borrow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
235:There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,
There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
236:Dread not the ruin, fear not the storm-blast, yield not, O Trojans.
Zeus shall rebuild. Death ends not our days, the fire shall not triumph. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
237:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight, My body is God’s happy living tool, My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. (Collected poems ~ Transformation )#SriAurobindo
#NFDB
238:Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not on the cry of the legions
Founds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
239:Gods change not their strength, but are of old
And as of old, and man, though less than these,
May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
#NFDB
240:Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us always
Drives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
241:Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
242:Easy is the love that lasts
Only with favours in the shopman heart!
Who, smitten, takes and gives the kiss, he loves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
243:This grey hour was born
For the ascetic in his silent cave
And for the dying man whose heart released
Loosens its vibrant strings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Chitrangada,
#NFDB
244:Man, by experience of passion purged,
His myriad faculty perfecting, widens
His nature as it rises till it grows
With God conterminous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
#NFDB
245:Always man’s Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;
Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then ‘tis graven, ‘tis granite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
246:We, too, by the Eternal Might are led
To whatsoever goal He wills.
Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspread
His strong breath fills. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To R.,
#NFDB
247:Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ascent,
#NFDB
248:He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God’s Labour,
#NFDB
249:Sin exalted
Seizes secure on the thrones of the world for her glorious portion,
Down to the bottomless pit the good man is thrust in his virtue. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
250:And all man’s ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes this span
Of brittle life can limit immortal man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To Weep because a Glorious Sun,
#NFDB
251:The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God’s Labour,
#NFDB
252:A tree beside the sandy river-beach
Holds up its topmost boughs
Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,
Earth-bound, heaven-amorous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A Tree,
#NFDB
253:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My body is God’s happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Transformation,
#NFDB
254:Is not the world his disguise? when that cloak is tossed back from his shoulders,
Beauty looks out like a sun on the hearts of the ravished beholders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
255:Vain, they have said, is the anguish of man and his labour diurnal,
Vainly his caravans cross through the desert of Time to the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Vain, they have Said,
#NFDB
256:In some faint dawn,
In some dim eve,
Like a gesture of Light,
Like a dream of delight
Thou com’st nearer and nearer to me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In Some Faint Dawn,
#NFDB
257:Thick and persistent the night confronts all his luminous longings;
Dire death’s sickle mows like a harvest his hosts and his throngings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Vain, they have Said,
#NFDB
258:Wilt thou not perfect this rather that sprang too from Wisdom and Power?
Taking the earthly rose canst thou image not Heaven in a flower? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
259:My mind is awake in stirless trance,
Hushed my heart, a burden of delight;
Dispelled is the senses’ flicker-dance,
Mute the body aureate with light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Trance,
#NFDB
260:Around me was a formless solitude:
All had become one strange Unnameable,
An unborn sole Reality world-nude,
Topless and fathomless, for ever still. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Adwaita,
#NFDB
261:Confident of His grace, expect His will;
Let Him lead; though hidden be the bourne,
See Him in all that happens; that fulfil
For which thou wert born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To R.,
#NFDB
262:fools! whose pride
Absurd the gods permit a little space
To please their souls with laughter, then replace
In the loud limbo of futilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,
#NFDB
263:Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell,
The storms that thunder, winds that sweep;
Always our Captain holds the rudder well,
He does not sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To R.,
#NFDB
264:Time is a strong convention; future and present
Were living in the past;
They are one image that our wills complaisant
Into three schemes have cast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Rebirth,
#NFDB
265:Lo, all these peoples and who was it fashioned them? Who is unwilling
Still to have done with it? laughs beyond pain and saves in the killing? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
266:Our souls and heaven are of an equal stature
And have a dateless birth;
The unending seed, the infinite mould of Nature,
They were not made on earth, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Rebirth,
#NFDB
267:Summer is dead and rich repose
And springtide and the rose,
And woods and all sweet things make moan;
The weeping earth is turned to stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
268:Man worships the ungrasped. His vagrant thought
Still busy with the illimitable void
Lives all the time by little things upbuoyed
Which he contemns ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Euphrosyne,
#NFDB
269:Noble be in peace, invincible, brave in the battle,
Stern and calm to thy foe, to the suppliant merciful. Mortal
Favour and wrath as thou walkst heed never ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
270:I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God’s Labour,
#NFDB
271:Still, still we can hear them
Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.
Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
272:On the white summit of eternity
A single Soul of bare infinities,
Guarded he keeps by a fire-screen of peace
His mystic loneliness of nude ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Shiva,
#NFDB
273:Therefore is the woman’s part
Nearest divine, who to one motion keeps
And like the fixed immortal planets’ round
Is constant to herself in him she loves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Uloupie,
#NFDB
274:Maybe lurking in my unconscious was the idea that when someone's collected poems are published it means that the poet is dead. I found myself looking at my work as if I were at my own funeral. ~ Ron Padgett
#NFDB
275:Form in its heart of silence recondite
Hides the significance of His mystery,
Form is the wonder-house of eternity,
A cavern of the deathless Eremite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Form,
#NFDB
276:Yama, the strong pure Hades sad and subtle,
Dharma, who keeps the laws of old untouched,
Critanta, who ends all things and at last
Himself shall end. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
#NFDB
277:Temple-ground
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature’s abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
278:A king of greatness and a slave of love,
Host of the stars and guest in Nature’s inn,
A high spectator spirit throned above,
A pawn of passion in the game divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lila,
#NFDB
279:Even in the worm is a god and it writhes for a form and an outlet.
Workings immortal obscurely struggling, hints of a godhead
Labour to form in this clay a divinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
280:All is not finished in the unseen decree;
A Mind beyond our mind demands our ken,
A life of unimagined harmony
Awaits, concealed, the grasp of unborn men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Evolution - II,
#NFDB
281:He is in me, round me, facing everywhere.
Self-walled in ego to exclude His right,
I stand upon its boundaries and stare
Into the frontiers of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Omnipresence,
#NFDB
282:Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Musa Spiritus,
#NFDB
283:Wise are the gods in their silence,
Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdom
Hard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
284:I shall not die.
Although this body, when the spirit tires
Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires,
My house consumes, not I. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Triumph-Song of Trishuncou,
#NFDB
285:Fate severe like a mother
Teaches our wills by disaster and strikes down the props that would weaken,
Fate and the Thought on high that is wiser than yearnings of mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
286:I have broken the limits of embodied mind
And am no more the figure of a soul.
The burning galaxies are in me outlined;
The universe is my stupendous whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Spirit,
#NFDB
287:I have escaped and the small self is dead;
I am immortal, alone, ineffable;
I have gone out from the universe I made,
And have grown nameless and immeasurable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Liberation - I,
#NFDB
288:I have given my mind to be dug Thy channel mind,
I have offered up my will to be Thy will:
Let nothing of myself be left behind
In our union mystic and unutterable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Surrender,
#NFDB
289:Fools or hypocrites! Meanest falsehood is this among mortals,
Veils of purity weaving, names misplacing ideal
When our desires we disguise and paint the lusts of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
290:He is not anything, yet all is He;
He is not all but far exceeds that scope.
Both Time and Timelessness sink in that sea:
Time is a wave and Space a wandering drop. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Parabrahman,
#NFDB
291:Wast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beauty
Move like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy duty
Graved in thy heart as on tablets of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
292:And high Delight, a spirit infinite,
That is the fountain of this glorious world,
Delight that labours in its opposite,
Faints in the rose and on the rack is curled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Parabrahman,
#NFDB
293:There are two beings in my single self.
A Godhead watches Nature from behind
At play in front with a brilliant surface elf,
A time-born creature with a human mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,
#NFDB
294:A life of intensities wide, immune
Floats behind the earth and her life-fret,
A magic of realms mastered by spell and rune,
Grandiose, blissful, coloured, increate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Life Heavens,
#NFDB
295:All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Nirvana,
#NFDB
296:It is Thy rapture flaming through my nerves
And all my cells and atoms thrill with Thee;
My body Thy vessel is and only serves
As a living wine-cup of Thy ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Bliss of Identity,
#NFDB
297:He must stride on conquering all,
Threatening and clamouring, brutal, invincible,
Until he meets upon his storm-swept road
A greater devil—or thunderstroke of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dwarf Napoleon,
#NFDB
298:Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ocean Oneness,
#NFDB
299:Some huge somnambulist Intelligence
Devising without thought process and plan
Arrayed the burning stars’ magnificence,
The living bodies of beasts and the brain of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Inconscient,
#NFDB
300:I housed within my heart the life of things,
All hearts athrob in the world I felt as mine;
I shared the joy that in creation sings
And drank its sorrow like a poignant wine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Life-Unity,
#NFDB
301:Life and mind and their glory and debate
Are the slow prelude of a vaster theme,
A sketch confused of a supernal plan,
A preface to the epic of the Supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
#NFDB
302:now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’ ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Word of the Silence,
#NFDB
303:There is a silence greater than any known
To earth’s dumb spirit, motionless in the soul
That has become Eternity’s foothold,
Touched by the infinitudes for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Jivanmukta,
#NFDB
304:My mind is hushed in wide and endless light,
My heart a solitude of delight and peace,
My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight,
My body a point in white infinities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Liberation - I,
#NFDB
305:Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ocean Oneness,
#NFDB
306:The Friend of Man helps him with life and death
Until he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,
Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.
He feels the joy of the immortal play; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Epiphany,
#NFDB
307:Who art thou in the heart comrade of man who sitst
August, watching his works, watching his joys and griefs,
Unmoved, careless of pain, careless of death and fate? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness and the Wheel,
#NFDB
308:A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure of thought, virgin of will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Word of the Silence,
#NFDB
309:One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.
This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,
Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
310:Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,
All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,
Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
311: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
#NFDB
312:Two genii in the dubious heart of man,
Two great unhappy foes together bound
Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground;
They strive for ever since the race began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In the Moonlight,
#NFDB
313:I saw my soul a traveller through Time;
From life to life the cosmic ways it trod,
Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime,
Evolving from the worm into the god. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Miracle of Birth,
#NFDB
314:Love and the need of mastery, joy and the longing for greatness
Rage like a fire unquenchable burning the world and creating,
Nor till humanity dies will they sink in the ashes of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
315:One, universal, ensphering creation,
Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,
Feel thyself God-born, know thyself deathless.
Timeless return to thy immortal existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Soul in the Ignorance,
#NFDB
316:The crude beginnings of the lifeless earth,
The mindless stirrings of the plant and tree
Prepared our thought; thought for a godlike birth
Broadens the mould of our mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Evolution - II,
#NFDB
317:This mute stupendous Energy that whirls
The stars and nebulae in its long train,
Like a huge Serpent through my being curls
With its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness Spirit,
#NFDB
318:We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,
Waves of that sea:
From Him we come, to Him we go, desire
Eternally,
And so long as He wills, our separate birth
Is and shall be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
319:All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice,
Music and thunder and the cry of birds,
Life’s babble of her sorrows and her joys,
Cadence of human speech and murmured words, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Hearing,
#NFDB
320:I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine. Time is my drama or my pageant dream.Now are my illumined cells joy's flaming scheme And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine.(Collected Poems ~ Transformation)#SriAurobindo
#NFDB
321:In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages,
Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,
Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinker
He is throned in His seats that for ever endure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
322:That is our home and that the secret hope
Our hearts explore.
To bring those heavens down upon the earth
We all descend,
And fragments of it in the human birth
We can command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
323:Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe
Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball
Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
324:To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas.
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”
― Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems ~ Dylan Thomas
#NFDB
325:Although consenting here to a mortal body,
He is the Undying; limit and bond he knows not;
For him the aeons are a playground,
Life and its deeds are his splendid shadow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Jivanmukta,
#NFDB
326:I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self
And Time and Space my spirit’s seeing are.
I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,
I am the wind’s speed and the blazing star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Cosmic Consciousness,
#NFDB
327:The Master who bends o’er His creatures,
Suffers their sins and their errors and guides them screening the guidance;
Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
328:All music is only the sound of His laughter,
All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss;
Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridal
Of Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
329:My life is the life of village and continent,
I am earth’s agony and her throbs of bliss;
I share all creatures’ sorrow and content
And feel the passage of every stab and kiss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Spirit,
#NFDB
330:No danger can perturb my spirit’s calm:
My acts are Thine; I do Thy works and pass;
Failure is cradled on Thy deathless arm,
Victory is Thy passage mirrored in Fortune’s glass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Worker,
#NFDB
331:Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.
Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,
Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Soul in the Ignorance,
#NFDB
332:Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death’s a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.
From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
#NFDB
333:My soul’s wide self of living infinite Space
Outlines its body luminous and unborn
Behind the earth-robe; under the earth-mask grows clear
The mould of an imperishable face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Immortality,
#NFDB
334:I know, O God, the day shall dawn at last
When man shall rise from playing with the mud
And taking in his hands the sun and stars
Remould appearance, law and process old. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
335:Two are the ends of existence, two are the dreams of the Mother:
Heaven unchanging, earth with her time-beats yearn to each other,—
Earth-souls needing the touch of the heavens peace to recapture ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
336:Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,
Our strength a parody of the Immortal’s power,
Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal’s way
Hunting the unseizable beauty of an hour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
337:There is a joy behind suffering; pain digs our road to his pleasance.
All things have bliss for their secret; only our consciousness falters
Fearing to offer itself as a victim on ecstasy’s altars. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
338:Who shall foretell the event of a battle, the fall of a footstep?
Oracles, visions and prophecies voice but the dreams of the mortal,
And ‘tis our spirit within is the Pythoness tortured in Delphi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
339:Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,
Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnight
Treading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
340:There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun,
A Bliss in the heart’s crypt grown fiery white,
The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,
A Silence on the mountains of delight, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
#NFDB
341:Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,
Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
342:Mortals, your end is beatitude, rapture eternal his meaning:
Joy, which he most now denies, is his purpose: the hedges, the screening
Were but the rules of his play; his denials came to lure farther. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
343:Publication there [in Nimbus] was to prove a turning point… The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964) ~ Patrick Kavanagh
#NFDB
344:I dwell in the spirit’s calm nothing can move
And watch the actions of Thy vast world-force,
Its mighty wings that through infinity move
And the Time-gallopings of the deathless Horse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness Spirit,
#NFDB
345: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
#NFDB
346:Yet in the midst of our labour and weeping not utterly lonely
Wander our steps, nor are terror and grief our portion only.
Do we not hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
347:Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit,
Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changeless
Far beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
348:How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,
Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?
Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
349:Our souls travelling different paths have met in the ages
Each for its work and they cling for an hour to the names of affection,
Then Time’s long waves bear them apart for new forms we shall know not, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
350:Self-Giving
Hateful I hold him who sworn to a cause that is holy and common
Broods upon private wrongs or serving his lonely ambition
Studies to reap his gain from the labour and woe of his fellows. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
351:Dead is the past; the void has possessed it; its drama is ended,
Finished its music. The future is dim and remote from our knowledge;
Silent it lies on the knees of the gods in their luminous stillness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
352:All eyes that look on me are my sole eyes;
The one heart that beats within all breasts is mine.
The world’s happiness flows through me like wine,
Its million sorrows are my agonies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Indwelling Universal,
#NFDB
353:Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed that’s forgotten;
Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:
Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
354:Moved man’s tongue in its wrath looses speech that is hard to be pardoned,
Afterwards stilled we regret, we forgive. If all were resented,
None could live on this earth that is thick with our stumblings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
355:Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
356:He is lost in the heart, in the cavern of Nature,
He is found in the brain where He builds up the thought:
In the pattern and bloom of the flowers He is woven,
In the luminous net of the stars He is caught. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
#NFDB
357:Oneness unknown to us dwells in these millions of figures and faces,
Wars with itself in our battles, loves in our clinging embraces,
Inly the self and the substance of things and their cause and their mover ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
358:This iron, brute, gigantic helpless toy
They call a world, this thing that turns and turns
And shrieks and bleeds and cannot stop, this victim
Broken and living yet on its own wheel, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
359:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
360:Into this life which the sunlight bounds and the greenness has cradled,
Armed with strength we have come; as our strength is, so is our joyance.
What but for joyance is birth and what but for joyance is living? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
361:Leave to the gods their godhead and, mortal, turn to thy labour;
Take what thou canst from the hour that is thine and be fearless in spirit;
This is the greatness of man and the joy of his stay in the sunlight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
362:Near to the quiet truth of things we stand
In this grey moment. Neither happy light
Nor joyful sound deceives the listening heart,
Nor Night inarms, the Mother brooding vast,
To comfort us with sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Chitrangada,
#NFDB
363:The gods have invented
Only one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,
Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
364:Has put the stars out ere the light,
And from their dewy cushions rise
Sweet flowers half-opening their eyes.
O pleasant then to feel as if new-born
The sweet, unripe and virgin air, the air of morn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
365:What though ‘tis true that the river of Life through the Valley of Peril
Flows! But the diamond shines on the cliffside, jacinth and beryl
Gleam in the crannies, sapphire, smaragdus the roadway bejewel, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
366:Out and alas! earth’s greatest are earth and they fail in the testing,
Conquered by sorrow and doubt, fate’s hammerers, fires of her furnace.
God in their souls they renounce and submit to their clay and its promptings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
367:My heart shall throb with the world-beats of Thy love,
My body become Thy engine for earth-use;
In my nerves and veins Thy rapture’s streams shall move;
My thoughts shall be hounds of Light for Thy power to loose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Surrender,
#NFDB
368:To heal the evils and mistakes of Space
And change the tragedy of the ignorant world
Into a Divine Comedy of joy
And the laughter and the rapture of God’s bliss.
The Mother of God is mother of our souls ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Mother of God,
#NFDB
369:Transient, we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashioned
Valiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkings
Formed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
370:I hurried to the Post Office and was given two fat parcels, which I opened with the scissors in the kitchen. Shakespeare’s Collected Works, T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems and Plays, Oscar Wilde’s Collected Works and a book with photos of naked women. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd
#NFDB
371:Who can point out the way of the gods and the path of their travel,
Who shall impose on them bounds and an orbit? The winds have their treading,–
They can be followed and seized, not the gods when they move towards their purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
372:Perhaps the heart of God for ever sings
And worlds come throbbing out from every note;
Perhaps His soul sits ever calm and still
And listens to the music rapturously,
Himself adoring, by Himself adored. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
#NFDB
373:Soul, my soul
Soul, my soul, yet ascend crossing the marge of life:
Mount out far above Time, reach to the golden end
... Live there lost in God space, rapturous, vacant, mute,
Sun-bright, timeless, immense, single and absolute.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
374:Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
375:Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
376:Such were a dream of some sage at night when he muses in fancy,
Imaging freely a flawless world where none were afflicted,
No man inferior, all could sublimely equal and brothers
Live in a peace divine like the gods in their luminous regions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
377:All things are subject to sweet pleasure,
But three things keep her richest measure,
The breeze that visits heaven
And knows the planets seven,
The green spring with its flowery truth
Creative and the luminous heart of youth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
378:The knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
379:All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide
Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for,
Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments
Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
380:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.
This by pain we prevent; we compel his ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
381:Men must sow earth with their hearts and their tears that their country may prosper;
Earth who bore and devours us that life may be born from our remnants.
Then shall the Sacrifice gather its fruits when the war-shout is silent,
Nor shall the blood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
382:Only one doom irreparable treads down the soul of a nation,
Only one downfall endures; ‘tis the ruin of greatness and virtue,
Mourning when Freedom departs from the life and the heart of a people,
Into her room comes creeping the mind of the slave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
383:Then if the tempest be loud and the thunderbolt leaping incessant
Shatters the roof, if the lintels flame at last and each cornice
Shrieks with the pain of the blast, if the very pillars totter,
Keep yet your faith in Zeus, hold fast to the word of ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
384:All whose eyes can pierce that curtain, gaze into dimness;
This they have glimpsed and that they imagine deceived by their natures
Seeing the forms in their hearts of dreadful things and of joyous;
As in the darkness our eyes are deceived by shadows ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
385:Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking
Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.
But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter
She would go glad and the goal would be missed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
386:Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkings
God we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,—
Justice and Virtue, her sister,—for where is justice mid creatures
Perfectly? Even the gods are betrayed by o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
387:Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,
Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,
All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,
Labour blind and vain expense and sacr ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
388:This is the burden of man that he acts from his heart and his passions,
Stung by the goads of the gods he hews at the ties that are dearest.
Lust was the guide they sent us, wrath was a whip for his coursers,
Madness they made the heart’s comrade, r ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
389:This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;
Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit nor for failure,
Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.
Light that they hav ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
390:Vainly the divine whispers seek us; the heights are rejected.
Man to his earth drawn always prefers his nethermost promptings,
Man, devouring, devoured who is slayer and slain through the ages
Since by the beast he soars held and exceeds not that pe ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
391:What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victor
Boons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe and the stranger,
Fallen from the virtue stern that heaven permits to a mortal?
Death is not keener than this nor the slaughter of f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
392:Who among men has not thoughts that he holds for the wisest, though foolish?
Who, though feeble and nought, esteems not his strength o’er his fellow’s?
Therefore the wisest and strongest choose out a king and a leader,
Not as a perfect arbiter armed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
393:Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,
Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.
For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,
Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined
L ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
394:He who a god for his kindred,
Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,
Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire
Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle
Care ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
395:His flute with its sweetness ensnaring
Sounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
Hales us out naked and absolute, out to his woodlands eternal,
Out to his moonlit dances, his dalliance sweet and supernal,
And we go st ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
396:In earth’s rhythm of shadow and sunlight
Storm is the dance of the locks of the God assenting to greatness,
Zeus who with secret compulsion orders the ways of our nature;
Veiled in events he lives and working disguised in the mortal
Builds our str ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
397:Man who has towered
Out of the plasm and struggled by thought to Divinity’s level,
Man, this miniature second creator of good and of evil,
He too was only a compost of Matter made living, organic,
Forged as her thinking tool by an Energy blind and ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
398:Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
S ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
399:Though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nation’s will we are ruled in the home and the battle
An ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
400:God:::
Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,
Yet sitst above,
Master of all who work and rule and know,
Servant of Love!
Thou who disdainest not the worm to be
Nor even the clod,
Therefore we know by that humility
That thou art God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
401:Kama (Desire)
Delight and laughter walking hand in hand
Go with Me, and I play with grief and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Kama
Kama (Desire)
All energies put into activity—thought, speech, feeling, act—go to constitute Karma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Karma and Heredity,
#NFDB
402:Stood visible, Titanic, scarlet-clad,
Dark as a thunder-cloud, with streaming hair
Obscuring heaven, and in her sovran grasp
The sword, the flower, the boon, the bleeding head,—
Bhavani. Then she vanished; the daylight
Was ordinary in a common w ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,
#NFDB
403:God's Tread
Once we have chosen to be as the gods, we must follow that motion.
Knowledge must grow in us, might like a Titan’s, bliss like an ocean,
Calmness and purity born of the spirit’s gaze on the Real,
Rapture of his oneness embracing the soul in a clasp ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
#NFDB
404:Time in its cycles waited for man. Though his kingdom is ended,
Here in a speck mid the suns and his life is a throb in the aeons,
Yet, O you Titans and Gods, O Rudras, O strong Aditeians,
Man is the centre and knot; he is first, though the last in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
405:World-destiny waits upon that foaming lip.
A Titan Power upholds this pigmy man,
The crude dwarf instrument of a mighty Force.
Hater of the free spirit’s joy and light,
Made only of strength and skill and giant might,
A Will to trample humanity ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dwarf Napoleon,
#NFDB
406:Always the wide-pacing river of Life from its far-off fountains
Flows down mighty and broad, like a warhorse brought from its manger
Arching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges of danger.
Sometimes we hesitate, often start and would turn from t ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
407:Napoleon’s mind was swift and bold and vast,
His heart was calm and stormy like the sea,
His will dynamic in its grip and clasp.
His eye could hold a world within its grasp
And see the great and small things sovereignly.
A movement of gigantic d ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dwarf Napoleon,
#NFDB
408:Now I have done with space and my soul is released from the hours.
Saved is my heart from the need of joy, the attraction to sorrow,
Who have escaped from my past and forgotten today and tomorrow;
I have grown vacant and mighty, naked and wide as th ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
#NFDB
409:Mother-Earth
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earth’s close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to g ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
410:Suffering is the food of our strength and torture the bliss of our entrails.
We are pitiless, mighty and glad, the gods fear our laughter inhuman.
Our hearts are heroic and hard; we wear the belt of Orion:
Our will has the edge of the thunderbolt, o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Children of Wotan,
#NFDB
411:We are the javelins of Destiny, we are the children of Wotan,
We are the human Titans, the supermen dreamed by the sage.
A cross of the beast and demoniac with the godhead of power and will,
We were born in humanity’s sunset, to the Night is our pil ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Children of Wotan,
#NFDB
412:Earth-Memory
The earth is safer, warmer its sunbeams;
Death and limits are known; so he clings to them hating the summons.
So might one dwell who has come to take joy in a fair-lighted prison;
Amorous grown of its marble walls and its noble adornments,
Lost to ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
413:I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no voice of the celestial Friend.
And yet I know my footprints’ track shall be
A pathway towards I ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Pilgrim of the Night,
#NFDB
414:A Tree :::
A tree beside the sandy river-beach
Holds up its topmost boughs
Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,
Earth-bound, heaven amorous.
This is the soul of man. Body and brain
Hungry for earth our heavenly flight detain.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
415:He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
Desire (Rejection)
Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,
Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
#NFDB
416:author class:Sri Aurobindo
Soul, my soul
Soul, my soul, yet ascend crossing the marge of life:
Mount out far above Time, reach to the golden end
... Live there lost in God space, rapturous, vacant, mute,
Sun-bright, timeless, immense, single and absolute.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems
~ oem, - Soul, my soul
#NFDB
417:The wife unsung remains
Sharing his pleasures, taking half his pains
While to dream faces mounts the poet’s song. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Euphrosyne
Poet's wife
Look at things from an inner point of view and try to get the benefit of all that happens. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Right Attitude towards Difficulties,
#NFDB
418:All opposition seems and strife and chance,
An aimless labour with but scanty sense,
To eyes that see a part and miss the whole; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real
Part-Experience
When youth has quenched its soft and magic light,
Delightful things remain but dead is their delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,
#NFDB
419:Lure of the Infinite
With a hundred marvellous faces
Always he lures us to love him, always he draws us to pleasure
Leaving remembrance and anguish behind for our only treasure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ahana
Lure of the Infinite
Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex,
#NFDB
420:A might no human will nor force can gain,
A knowledge seated in eternity,
A bliss beyond our struggle and our pain
Are the high pinnacles of our destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Evolution - II
Man's destiny
The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal of whom the truth seen is a face or a form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,
#NFDB
421:There's something narcissistic in the phrase "collected poems." Who's collecting them? The poem. How hard is that? That's not a real collection. Now if he had made a collection of water fountains, or of oven mitts, that would be a collection. Or if he'd collected editions of Festus, the long mad poem written somewhere in the nineteenth century by a lost soul named Bailey--that would be an achievement. But collecting your own poems? What's so great about that? And mixing and mingling them in with some new? New and and Collected Poems? Oh, well! Good job. Nice going. ~ Nicholson Baker
#NFDB
422:Bride of the Fire :::
Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close, -
Bride of the Fire!
I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose,
I have slain desire.
Beauty of the Light, surround my life, -
Beauty of the Light!
I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief,
I can bear thy delight.
Image of Ecstasy, thrill and enlace, -
Image of Bliss!
I would see only thy marvellous face,
Feel only thy kiss.
Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -
Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
O living sun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
423:Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Self-conquest
When one conquers a difficulty or goes forward, it creates a right current in the atmosphere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Right Attitude towards Difficulties
Self-Conquest
Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,
#NFDB
424:Krishna:::
At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.
I have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,
And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,
And known a deathless ecstasy's surprise
And sorrow in my heart for ever mute.
Nearer and nearer now the music draws,
Life shudders with a strange felicity;
All Nature is a wide enamoured pause
Hoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.
For this one moment lived the ages past;
The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
425:The Golden Light :::
Thy golden Light came down into my brain
And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
A calm illumination and a flame.
Thy golden Light came down into my throat,
And all my speech is now a tune divine,
A paean-song of Thee my single note;
My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.
Thy golden Light came down into my heart
Smiting my life with Thy eternity;
Now has it grown a temple where Thou art
And all its passions point towards only Thee.
Thy golden Light came down into my feet,
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
426:The Silver Call
There is a godhead of unrealised things
To which Time's splendid gains are hoarded dross;
A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings
Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.
All eye has seen and all the ear has heard
Is a pale illusion by some greater voice
And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,
No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice
Can equal those diviner ecstasies.
A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken
Of those yet unimagined harmonies,
The fate and privilege of unborn men.
As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 594,
#NFDB
427:I Have A Hundred Lives:::
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past, and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear
And in thy spirit's motions half-possess
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 180,
#NFDB
428:The Divine Worker
I face earth's happenings with an equal soul;
In all are heard Thy steps: Thy unseen feet
Tread Destiny's pathways in my front. Life's whole
Tremendous theorem is Thou complete.
No danger can perturb my spirit's calm:
My acts are Thine; I do Thy works and pass;
Failure is cradled on Thy deathless arm,
Victory is Thy passage mirrored in Fortune's glass.
In this rude combat with the fate of man
Thy smile within my heart makes all my strength;
Thy Force in me labours at its grandiose plan,
Indifferent to the Time-snake's crawling length.
No power can slay my soul; it lives in Thee.
Thy presence is my immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
429:Cosmic Consciousness :::
I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self
And Time and Space my spirit's seeing are.
I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,
I am the wind's speed and the blazing star.
All Nature is the nursling of my care,
I am its struggle and the eternal rest;
The world's joy thrilling runs through me, I bear
The sorrow of millions in my lonely breast.
I have learned a close identity with all,
Yet am by nothing bound that I become;
Carrying in me the universe's call
I mount to my imperishable home.
I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,
Yet still am one with born and unborn things.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
430:The warden always seems to know which book to bring. When the sun is gunslinger blue, the warden brings a western. When rain slates against the towers and the world has gone hopeless with gray, it is Bible stories. When the halls ring with the cries of riot and the bars of my own cell rattle with pain, the warden drops a soft book on the floor, solace in its pages: the collected poems of Walt Whitman. And oh, my favorites, like the tastes of childhood. Every few months the warden passes me The White Dawn, and for a few precious days I traverse the open heavens on hard-packed moonlit snow and see the blue splashing arctic lights, and I fill my belly with frozen seal meat and laugh with my Inuit friends. ~ Rene Denfeld
#NFDB
431:There are no beautiful women writers.’ ‘Yes there are.’ No there aren’t. Well, except for Edna O’Brien, who is actually a kind of genius and gained my undying admiration when she said plots are for precocious schoolboys (Book 2,738, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 7th Series, Secker & Warburg, London). ‘Here, look at Emily Dickinson,’ I said, and showed him the passport-sized photo on the back cover of the Collected Poems. ‘Her face, two prunes in porridge.’ ‘I don’t know, I think she looks nice,’ he said. ‘Nice?’ ‘She does. She looks interesting.’ Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty. ~ Niall Williams
#NFDB
432:Because Thou Art :::
Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;
It bears thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.
Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune:
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.
It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring thee on their fiery wings;
Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone.
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the futures passionate hope is Thou.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
433:author class:Sri Aurobindo
The Golden Light :::
Thy golden Light came down into my brain
And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
A calm illumination and a flame.
Thy golden Light came down into my throat,
And all my speech is now a tune divine,
A paean-song of Thee my single note;
My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.
Thy golden Light came down into my heart
Smiting my life with Thy eternity;
Now has it grown a temple where Thou art
And all its passions point towards only Thee.
Thy golden Light came down into my feet,
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
~ oem, - The Golden Light
#NFDB
434:Invitation:::
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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
435:author class:Sri Aurobindo
class:poem
I have a hundred lives
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past, and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear
And in thy spirit's motions half-possess
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 180
~ Sri Aurobindo, - I have a hundred lives
#NFDB
436:author class:Sri Aurobindo
Because Thou Art :::
Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;
It bears thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.
Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune:
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.
It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring thee on their fiery wings;
Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone.
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the futures passionate hope is Thou.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
~ oem, - Because Thou Art
#NFDB
437:When no one listens To the quiet trees When no one notices The sun in the pool. Where no one feels The first drop of rain Or sees the last star Or hails the first morning Of a giant world Where peace begins And rages end: One bird sits still Watching the work of God: One turning leaf, Two falling blossoms, Ten circles upon the pond. One cloud upon the hillside, Two shadows in the valley And the light strikes home. Now dawn commands the capture Of the tallest fortune, The surrender Of no less marvelous prize! Closer and clearer Than any wordy master, Thou inward Stranger Whom I have never seen, Deeper and cleaner Than the clamorous ocean, Seize up my silence Hold me in Thy Hand! Now act is waste And suffering undone Laws become prodigals Limits are torn down For envy has no property And passion is none. Look, the vast Light stands still Our cleanest Light is One! [1962.jpg] -- from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton
~ Thomas Merton, Stranger
#NFDB
438:Yet not for tyrant wrong nor to serve as a sword for our passions
Zeus created our strength, but that earth might have help from her children.
Not of our moulding its gifts to our soul nor were formed by our labour!
When did we make them, where were ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
So when the Eye supreme perceives that we rise up too swiftly,
Drawn towards height but fullness contemning, called by the azure,
Life when we fail in, poor in our base and forgetting our mother,
Back we are hurled to our roots; we recover our sap f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
Man, repelled by the gulfs within him and shrinking from vastness,
Form of the earth accepts and is glad of the lap of his mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
Man does not act, even most primitively, from fear alone, but from twin motives, fear and desire, fear of things unpleasant and maleficent and desire of things pleasant and beneficent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Motives of Devotion,
#NFDB
439:Musa Spiritus :::
O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.
Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;
All make tranquil, all make free.
Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God
As He comes from His timeless infinity
To build in their rapture His burning abode.
Weave from my life His poem of days,
His calm pure dawns and His noons of force.
My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race,
My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
440:Collected Poems (1994)
Lying in bed this morning, just a year
Since our first days, I was trying to assess Against my natural caution - by desire
And how the fact outdid it, my happiness:
And finding the awkwardness of keeping clear
Numberless flamingo thoughts and memories,
My dear and dearest husband, in this kind
Of rambling letter, I'll disburse my mind.
Technical problems have always given me trouble:
A child stiff at the fiddle, my ear had praise
And my intention only; so, as was natural,
Coming to verse, I hid my lack of ease
By writing only as I thought myself able,
Escaped the crash of the bold by salt originalities.
This is one reason for writing far from one's heart;
A better is, that one fears it may be hurt.
By an inadequate style one fears to cheapen
Glory, and that it may be blurred if seen
Through the eye's used centre, not the new margin.
It is the hardest thing with love to burn
And write it down, for what was the real passion
Left to its own words will seem trivial and thin.
We can in making love look face to face:
In poetry, crooked, and with no embrace.
Tolstoy's hero found in his newborn child
Only another aching, vulnerable part;
And it is true our first joy hundredfold
Increased our dangers, pricking in every street
In accidents and wars: yet this is healed
Not by reason, but with an endurance of delight
Since our marriage, which, once thoroughly known,
Is known for good, though in time it were gone.
You, hopeful baby with the erring toes,
Grew, it seems to me, to a natural pleasure
In the elegant strict machine, from the abstruse
Science of printing to the rich red and azure
It plays on hoardings, rusty industrial noise,
All these could add to your inherited treasure:
A poise which many wish for, writing the machine
10
Poems of laboured praise, but few attain.
And loitered up your childhood to my arms.
I would hold you there for ever, and know
Certainly now, that though the vacuum looms
Quotidian dullness, in these beams don't die
They're wrong who say that happiness never comes
On earth, that was spread here its crystal sea.
And since you, loiterer, did compose this wonder,
Be with me still, and may God hold his thunder.
~ Anne Barbara Ridler
#NFDB
441:Mother of Dreams :::
Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.
What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?
Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.
Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
#NFDB
442:A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began.
For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
Enamoured of sorrow and sin.
The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
His drama can endure.
All around is darkness and strife;
For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
Cast by the Undying Ones.
Man lights his little torches of hope
That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
An inn his pilgrimage.
The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose.
All that was found must again be sought,
Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
Through vistas of fruitless lives.
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.
How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.
"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
And bound to life's iron doom?
"This earth is ours, a field of Night
For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
Or suffer a god's desires?
"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
And the curb of his wide white peace."
But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.
A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.
I left the surface gauds of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.
Above me the dragon murmurs moan
And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
I have walked in the bottomless pit.
On a desperate stair my feet have trod
Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
Into the human abyss.
He who I am was with me still;
All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
On my vast untroubled brow.
The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
And glimmer from shore to shore.
Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn
Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness' end.
A little more and the new life's doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534,
#NFDB
443:author class:Sri Aurobindo
A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began.
For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
Enamoured of sorrow and sin.
The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
His drama can endure.
All around is darkness and strife;
For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
Cast by the Undying Ones.
Man lights his little torches of hope
That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
An inn his pilgrimage.
The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose.
All that was found must again be sought,
Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
Through vistas of fruitless lives.
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.
How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.
"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
And bound to life's iron doom?
"This earth is ours, a field of Night
For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
Or suffer a god's desires?
"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
And the curb of his wide white peace."
But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.
A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.
I left the surface gauds of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.
Above me the dragon murmurs moan
And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
I have walked in the bottomless pit.
On a desperate stair my feet have trod
Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
Into the human abyss.
He who I am was with me still;
All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
On my vast untroubled brow.
The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
And glimmer from shore to shore.
Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn
Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness' end.
A little more and the new life's doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534
~ Sri Aurobindo, class:poem
#NFDB
444:had to instruct the announcers to say "'Dillan,' the way he himself pronounced
it". His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle,
Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.
His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his
maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms. These rural sojourns and the contrast
with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably
many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to
be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. He shied away from
school and preferred reading on his own. He was considered too frail to fight in
World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the
government. Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's Dame school, a
private school which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He
described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning:
Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of
galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down
from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked
sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime — the pulling of a girl's hair
during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.
In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in
the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught. He was an
undistinguished student. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's
magazine. He later became its editor. He began keeping poetry notebooks and
amassed 200 poems in four such journals between 1930 and 1934. He left school
at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post,
only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. After leaving the
job he filled his notebooks even faster. Of the 90 poems he published, half were
written during these first years. He then joined an amateur dramatic group in
Mumbles called Little Theatre (Now Known as Swansea Little Theatre), but still
continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years.
Thomas spent his time visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along
Swansea Bay, visiting a theatre where he used to perform, and frequenting
Swansea's pubs. He especially patronised those in the Mumbles area such the
Antelope Hotel and the Mermaid Hotel. A short walk from the local newspaper
where he worked was the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, central Swansea. At
the café he met with various artist contemporaries, such as his good friend the
poet Vernon Watkins. These writers, musicians and artists became known as 'The
Kardomah Gang'. In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his
various visits to London.
In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in a "three
nights' blitz". Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that
suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were
destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home,
in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey
Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the
bombing raids. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre
with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is
dead". The Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland Street, not far from the
original location
Career and Family
It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact,
still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous
for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That
Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion",
appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933 and further work appeared in
The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the
day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18
Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run
by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world,
including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did
not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies
themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other
new authors, including Philip Larkin.
His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated
Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts
no more than once in three years”. In all, he wrote half of his poems while living
at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London.It was also the time that
Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.
In the spring of 1936, ~ Dylan Thomas
met dancer Caitlin Macnamara in the
Wheatsheaf pub, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were
introduced by Augustus John, who was Macnamara's lover at the time (there
were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married
Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed to Macnamara on the spot, and the two
began a courtship. On 11 July 1937, Thomas married Macnamara in a register
office in Penzance, Cornwall. In 1938, the couple rented a cottage in the village
of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard,
was born on 30 January 1939 (d. 2000). Their daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis,
was born on 3 March 1943 (d. 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born
on 24 July 1949.
Wartime and After
At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was designated C3, which meant
that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of
the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service
leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He lived on
tiny fees from writing and reviewing and borrowed heavily from friends and
acquaintances, writing begging letters to random literary figures in hope of
support, envisaging this as a plan of long term regular income. He wrote to the
director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment
but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced
films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942
with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The
Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain). He actively sought to build
a reputation as a raconteur and outrageous writer, heavy drinker and wit.
The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for
Thomas. Poet and critic W. J. Turner commented in The Spectator "This book
alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet". Thomas was well known for
being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. He
made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC.
Often considered his greatest single work, Under Milk Wood, a radio play
featuring the characters of Llareggub, is set in a fictional Welsh fishing village
('Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing
to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play
actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were
then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of
the pub and back to her office to finish the work. The play took several years to
write, the first half mostly in South Leigh, Oxford, in 1948, whilst the second half
was mostly written in America in May 1953. Fewer than 300 lines were written in
Laugharne, according to one account, which also explains the influence of New
Quay on the play.
New York
John Malcolm Brinnin invited Thomas to New York and in 1950 embarked on a
lucrative three month tour of arts centres and campuses in the States. He toured
there again in 1952, this time with Caitlin, who discovered that he had been
unfaithful on his 1950 trip. They both drank heavily, as if in competition,
Thomas's health beginning to suffer with gout and lung problems. Thomas
performed a 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood solo for the first time
on 3 May at Harvard during his early 1953 US tour, and then with a cast at the
Poetry Centre in New York on 14 May. He worked on the play further in Wales,
where in its completed form it premiered the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wales
on 8 October 1953, just 12 miles away from Laugharne. It was said Thomas gave
a 'supreme virtuoso performance'. He then travelled to London and on the 19
October he flew to America. He died in New York on 5 November 1953 before the
BBC could record the play. Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954
and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film.
Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, published when he was
38, won the Foyle poetry prize. He wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night",
a villanelle, to his dying father, who passed away in 1952, one of the poet's last
poems.
Death
Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953, to take part in a performance
of Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Centre. He was already ill and
had a history of blackouts and heart problems, using an inhaler in New York to
help his breathing. Thomas had liked to boast of his addiction to drinking, saying
"An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do." He
"liked the taste of whisky" and had a powerful reputation for his drinking. The
writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how
the tension would build before a performance: “Would he arrive only to break
down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party?
Would he be offensive, violent, obscene? These were alarming and yet exciting
possibilities.” His wife Caitlin said in her embittered memoir “Nobody ever needed
encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.” Thomas “exhibited the excesses
and experienced the adulation which would later be associated with rock stars,”
however the amount he is supposed to have drunk in his lifetime and in New
York before his death, may well have been exaggerated as Thomas became
mythologised.
On the evening of 27 October 1953, Thomas's 39th birthday, the poet attended a
party in his honour but felt so unwell that he returned to his hotel. On 28 October
1953, he took part in Poetry And The Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16,
which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard
Maas. The director of the Poetry Centre, John Brinnin, was also Thomas's tour
agent. Brinnin didn't travel to New York, remaining at home in Boston and
handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. Reitell met Thomas at Idlewild
Airport (now JFK airport) and he told her that he had had a terrible week, had
missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's previous
misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night
together at the Chelsea Hotel. The next day she invited him to her apartment but
he declined, saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest
of the afternoon. After spending the night at the hotel with Thomas, Reitell went
back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum
noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before
the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening. The doctor went to work with
his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk
Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards. Reitell would later describe Feltenstein
as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything.
A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen
significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses, such as Thomas had. By the end of
the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog. On 3
November Thomas spent most of that day in bed drinking He went out in the
evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went
out again for a drink at 2am. After drinking at the White Horse Tavern, a pub
he'd found through Scottish poet Ruthven Todd, Thomas returned to the Hotel
Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the
record!" The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time
later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that
amount. Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4
November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was
feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with
Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr.
Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing
morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5
November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell
unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.
Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital.
The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58am, and that the
"impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the
brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response". The duty
doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right
sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the
presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5
November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the
following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged
first words were "Is the bloody man dead yet?" The pneumonia worsened and
Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November.
Poetry
Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle
Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a
patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing
process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw
biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his
poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women
locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life
again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely
woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and
preaching, and Freud. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in
poems such as Fern Hill, In Country Sleep, Ballad of the Long-legged Bait or In
the White Giant's Thigh from Under Milkwood:
Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house
and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,
the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse
of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed
Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were
Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:
I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in
love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could
read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone.
What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance. [...] I fell in love,
that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of
words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I
think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and
then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I
began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses
and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that
could be ever.
A Child's Christmas In Wales
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town
corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I
sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it
snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for
twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and
headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the
rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and
bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued
ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs.
Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's
garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing
at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were
no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped
in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horriblewhiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white backgarden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined
trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at
the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the
eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs.
Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it
at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the
neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house;
and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was
bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii.
This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We
bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of
the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept
there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in
the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke
with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in
the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think
we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins,
he likes fires."
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall
men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in
time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve.
And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky
room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim
and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the
right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said,
"Would you like anything to read?"
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and
birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when
we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday
afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones
of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel,
before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback,
it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother
down and then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from
white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam
and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew
overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely
-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb
thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they
crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the
children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks.
And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the
powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the
churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for
Christmas, on our fence."
"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and
the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and
huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot
like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a
rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly
glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He
wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot,
and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and
mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that
could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like
patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of
head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there
were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any
skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas,
no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though
warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and
drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."
"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose
and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell;
never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet;
10
and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a
mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a
painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals
any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red
field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge
and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh
for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could
always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy HobbiGames for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo!
And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make
him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet
of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the
street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking
a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the
balloons."
"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas
morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched
town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post
Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires
out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses
and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers
against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front
parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the
dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the highheaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few
large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly,
trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning
them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting
for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor
anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and
brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawnbowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take
his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or
fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big
pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking,
down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who
knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing
11
home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the
pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side
lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the
violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my
lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink,
put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that
gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey
and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened
all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little
and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse,
whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick.
Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed
thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and,
when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich
and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow
descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates
and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little
Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to
the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still
streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill
and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding
snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind
travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their
12
necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home
through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers
in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we
trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the
whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice
cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced
her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a
diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my
shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter
ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the
shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a
drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive
that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case,
and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as
of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached
the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we
began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness
round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together,
near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ...
And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a
long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of
the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running
we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the
hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the
town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.
Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin
sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in
the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song
about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart
was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to
bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the
unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the
other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady
falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the
close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
13
~ Dylan Thomas
#NFDB
0
19 Integral Yoga
6 Poetry
8 Sri Aurobindo
8 Nolini Kanta Gupta
5 The Mother
4 George Van Vrekhem
2 A B Purani
5 Collected Poems
4 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
4 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
wiki.auroville - Collected_Poems