|| Caverns of slumbering earth, there bringSri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2067
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
March 30, 1938
[Sri Aurobindo and the Mother]
Mrs. Sankar Ram wants me to ask you whether new glasses should be taken.
[Mother:] I suppose so.
We are thinking of giving S: 1) Some iodine, 2) Bromides, 3) Quinine and 4) Thyroid extract. If you approve of any of these, kindly let us know which. Of course, they have their somewhat uncertain and harmful side-effects.
[Mother:] All these drugs seem to be more dangerous one than the other. It is safer to abstain from them.
Can the Flute be metaphored as a bird, or can it be taken as a mysterious Bird?
Good Lord! no! A flute can’t wander about like a bird and have a flaming heart and all. Better leave it vague as it is, to be taken as any blooming mysterious bird.
||| My life is veiled in a sleep of light,
|| A hush that nothing breaks;
||| The world before my inward sight
||| Into pure beauty wakes.
||| Life that is deep and wonder-vast,
||| Lost in a breath of sound;
|| The bubbling shadows have been cast
|| From its heart’s timeless round.
||| In its lulled silver stream now shines
||| A lustrous smile of God
|| Whose brilliantly curved outlines,
|| Flashing on the memory-trod
|| Caverns of slumbering earth, there bring
|| A glow of the Infinite,
||| While my soul’s diamond voices wing
||| Into a heaven of light1.
Guru, I fear this is only a sprat – not even a perfect one, perhaps; for “earth” has strayed away from “my” without any link between them.
It is not a sprat, sir; it is a goldfish. You seem to be weak in poetical zoology. It is perfect, except for the one fault you have detected. The only alterations, (except the “pure”) I find needful, are meant to obviate that defect, by going back to “my”, so connecting the first and last lines (also aided by the repetition of “light”) and making the rest appear as closely connected with it. Like that it makes a very well-built and finely inspired poem. If you can produce more sprats like that, there will be much wealth in your fisheries. It is much better than the other recent ones, except the stress poem – nothing decorative,– all there!
1 “Sleep of Light”, Sun-Blossoms, p. 46.