Sri Aurobindo
The Mother

to Prithwi Singh

Correspondence (1933-1967)

2 December 1933

Prithwi Singh — Sri Aurobindo

Mother,

What is the meaning of the last stanza of the magnificent prose poem The Bird of Fire dazzling with high coloured imageries —

“O Flame, who art Time's last boon of the sacrifice, offering-flower held by the finite's gods to the Infinite,

O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred lids that look beyond all space,

One strange leap of thy mystic stress breaking the barriers of mind and life, arrives at its luminous term thy flight;

Invading the secret clasp of the Silence and crimson Fire thou frontest eyes in a timeless Face.”

Why “Flame” is “Time's last boon of the sacrifice”? and what is the inner significance of the last two lines?

It is not a prose poem — it is a poem with fixed metre and a system of rhymes.

The flame means the Bird of Flame and the Bird is the symbol of an inner Power that rises from the “sacrifice” in the Yoga. The last lines mean that it has the power of going beyond mind and life to that which is beyond mind and Life.

Sri Aurobindo
2 December 1933