Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1611

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 24, 1936

What is the second item in your prescription, Sir? Too Latinic for my poor knowledge.

Chlorate of Receptivity.

And I would put Aqua at the end to make it an absolutely pucca academical prescription.

Yes, but I thought of the two last ingredients afterwards.

And 12 doses every hour – these tinctures and vinums?

12 doses – every hour (one each hour). Plagiarised from your language, sir.

And where is the cost to be supplied from?

Gratis – for the poor.

I have composed a sort of a poem:

“Once swayed unmeasured insolent hopes in my breast:

Melting like snows heaped upon Himalaya-crest

Songs of my glory would o’erflow land and sea

In tempestuous floods bursting the limits of Eternity...”

Too grandiloquent?

Yes. But, man alive, what is the metre? It seems to be neither pentametric fish, nor lyrical red herring. I have turned it into Alexandrines.

“Once swayed an insolent hope unmeasured in my breast:

That like bright snows high-heaped upon Himalay’s crest

Songs of my glory overflowing land and sea

Would break in deathless floods through long Eternity.”