Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Two. Baroda
Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1900 – 1901

Thou didst mistake

Thou didst mistake, thy spirit’s infant flight

Opening its lovely wings upon the sun

Paused o’er the first strong bloom that met thy sight

Thinking perhaps it was the only one.

But all this fragrant garden was beyond.

Winds came to thee with hints of honey; day

Disclosed a brighter hope than this unsunned

Thought-sheltered heart and called thee far away.

Thou didst mistake. Must I then rage, grow ill,

With tortured vanity and think it love,

Miscall with brutal names my lady’s will

Fouling thy snowwhite image, O my dove?

Is not thy kiss enough, though only one,

For all eternity to live upon?

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 27.- Supplement.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 511 p.