Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

I. Short Poems
1895-1908

On the Mountains

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom,

Hills of a sterile grandeur, rocks that sublime

In bareness seek the blue sky’s infinite room

With their coeval snows untouched by Time!

I seek your solemn spaces! Let me at last

Forgotten of thought through days immemorable

Voiceless and needless keep your refuge vast,

Growing into the peace in which I dwell.

For like that Soul unmade you seem to brood

Who sees all things emerge but none creates,

Watching the ages from His solitude,

Lone, unconcerned, remote. You to all Fates

Offer an unmoved¹ heart and therefore abide²,

Who seek not, act not, strive not nor rebel.³

Like you, who are may grow like Him, as wide,⁴

Mere, uncreative, imperturbable.

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.

¹ unchanged

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² 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: heart, unmoved abide

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³ 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: Wordless, acceptant, sovereignly still.

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⁴ To be like you, grow like Him, silent, wide,
2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2:

There is a soul in us as silent, wide,

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