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Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Three. Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 – 1909
Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1900 – 1906

Suddenly out from the wonderful East

Suddenly out from the wonderful East like a woman exulting

Dawn stepped forth with a smile on her lips, and the glory of morning

Hovered over the hills; then sweet1 grew air with the breezes,

Sweet and keen as a wild swift virgin; the wind walked blithely,

Low was the voice of the leaves as they rustled and talked with the river,

Ganges, the sacred river2. Down from the northlands crowding,

Touching the steps of the ghauts with the silver tips of their fingers

Lightly the waters ran and talked to each other of sunshine,

Lightly they laughed. But high on his stake impaled by the roadway

Hung Mandavya the mighty in marble deep meditation,

Sepulchred, dumb; on his either side were the thieves, immobile.

They were dead, made free from cruelty, ceasing from anguish,

And forgetting the thirst. But past them Ganges the mighty,

First of the streams of the earth, our Mother, remembering the ages,

Poured to the sea.

Early at dawn by her ghauts the women of Mithila gathered.

There they filled their gurgling jars, or gilding the Ganges

Bathed in her waters and laughed as they bathed there clamouring, dashing

Dew of her coolness in eyes of each other: the banks called sweetly

Mad with the musical laughter of girls and joy of their crying,

Low melodious cries. As when in a wood on the hillsides

Thousands of bulbuls flitting and calling, eating the wild plums,

Filling the ear with sweetness carry from treetop to treetop

Vermeil of crest and scarlet of tail and small brown bodies

Flitting and calling, calling and flitting, full of sweet clamour,

Full of the wine of life, even such was the sweetness and clamour,

Women bathing close by the ghauts of the radiant Ganges,

Golden-limbed3 or white or darker than olives when ripest,

Lovely of face or of mood, but all sweethearted and happy

Aryan women. One there seemed of another moulding

Who was aloof from the crowd and the chaos of cheerful faces.

She at one side of the stairway slowly like one half-musing

Bathed there, hiding her face in the deep cool bosom of waters,

Losing herself in Ganges, or let its pearl drops dribble

Quietly down through the mystical night of her tresses on gleaming

Shoulders, betwixt her great breasts noble as hills at noontide

Back to their hurrying home: nor heeded the laughter near her.

Only at times when the clamour grew high, she would look up smiling

Such a slow sweet serious smile as a tender mother

Watching her children at play might smile forgetting the sorrow

Down in her own still patient heart where the deep tears gathered

Swell4 unwept, till they turn to a sea of sorrowful pity.

 

Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 1, No2 (1977, December).- 24-25 pp.

1 A&R. 1977, 2: sweet

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2 Note from A&R. 1977, 2.

The passage which follows seems to be the beginning of a projected recasting of this poem begun in Pondicherry, hut never pursued beyond three Una:

Where in a lapse of thc hills leaps lightly down with laughter.

White with her rustle of raiment upon the spray strewn boulders.

Cold in her virgin childhood the river resonant Ganges

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3 A&R. 1977, 2: Golden in limb

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4 A&R. 1977, 2: Ever

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