Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

II. Sonnets
1930–1950

The Hill-Top Temple

After unnumbered steps of a hill-stair

I saw upon earth’s head brilliant with sun

The immobile Goddess in her house of stone

In a loneliness of meditating air.

Wise were the human hands that set her there

Above the world and Time’s dominion;

The Soul of all that lives, calm, pure, alone,

Revealed its boundless self mystic and bare.

Our body is an epitome of some Vast

That masks its presence by our humanness.

In us the secret Spirit can indite

A page and summary of the Infinite,

A nodus of Eternity expressed

Live in an image and a sculptured face.

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.