Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

VI. Poems in New Metres

Ocean Oneness¹

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;

White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;

A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,

Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness

My spirit widens clasping the universe

Till all that seemed becomes the Real,

One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,

Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,

And, sole in a still eternal rapture,

Gathers all things to his heart for ever.

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 Alcaics. Modulations are allowed, trochee or iamb in the first foot or a long monosyllable; an occasional anapaest in place of an iamb is permitted; a bacchius can replace a dactyl.

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