Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

Bibliographical Note

Collected Poems, Volume 5 in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, contains all the poems included in

1. Songs to Myrtilla – 1895,

2. Urvasie – 1896,

3. Ahana and Other Poems – 915,

4. Love and Death – 1921,

5. Baji Prabhou – 1932,

6. Six Poems – 1934,

7. Transformation and Other Poems – 1941,

8. Poems – 1941,

9. Collected Poems and Plays – 1942,

10. Poems Past and Present – 1946,

11. Last Poems – 1952, and

12. More Poems – 1957; also

13. Ilion – 1957.

A few other poems found among Sri Aurobindo's papers are published here for the first time. All poems published after 1950 are reproduced from manuscripts exactly in the form found there. Translations and plays, even when in poetic form, are not included here. The plays appear in Volumes, 6 and 7 and the translations in Volume 8.

The poems in this Volume have been arranged in several sections – Short Poems, Sonnets, Long Poems, Poems in New Metres and Metrical Experiments. Although these have been sub-divided as far as possible according to the period of composition, the periods often overlap as the exact dates are not known. Where the dates of composition are available they are mentioned in the Contents against the title of the poem, otherwise the period is indicated.

The poems, marked 1890-92, belong to Sri Aurobindo's student days in England.

Sri Aurobindo's essay On Quantitative Metre and a few letters discussing metrical experiments are also included in this Volume.

Differences in titles of poems in SABCL and CWSA