Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

I. Short Poems
1890-1900

Madhusudan Dutt

Poet, who first with skill inspired did teach

Greatness to our divine Bengali speech,–

Divine, but rather with delightful moan

Spring’s golden mother makes when twin-alone

She lies with golden Love and heaven’s birds

Call hymeneal with enchanting words

Over their passionate faces, rather these

Than with the calm and grandiose melodies

(Such calm as consciousness of godhead owns)

The high gods speak upon their ivory thrones

Sitting in council high,– till taught by thee

Fragrance and noise of the world-shaking sea.

Thus do they praise thee who amazed espy

Thy winged epic and hear the arrows cry

And journeyings of alarmèd gods; and due

The praise, since with great verse and numbers new

Thou mad’st her godlike who was only fair.

And yet my heart more perfectly ensnare

Thy soft impassioned flutes and more thy Muse

To wander in the honied months doth choose

Than courts of kings, with Sita in the grove

Of happy blossoms, (O musical voice of love

Murmuring sweet words with sweeter sobs between!)

With Shoorpa in the Vindhyan forests green

Laying her wonderful heart upon the sod

Made holy by the well-loved feet that trod

Its vocal shades; and more unearthly bright

Thy jewelled songs made of relucent light

Wherein the birds of spring and summer and all flowers

And murmuring waters flow, her widowed hours

Making melodious who divinely loved.

No human hands such notes ambrosial moved;

These accents are not of the imperfect earth;

Rather the god was voiceful in their birth,

The god himself of the enchanting flute,

The god himself took up thy pen and wrote.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 2.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2009.- 751 p.