Immortal, moveless, calm, alone, august,1Sri Aurobindo
Collected Poems
CWSA.- Volume 2
Part Four. Calcutta and Chandernagore
Short Poems
Published in 1909 and 1910
Epiphany
Immortal, moveless, calm, alone, august,1
A2 silence throned, to just and to unjust
One Lord of still3 unutterable love,
I saw Him, Shiva, like a brooding dove
Close-winged upon her nest. The outcasts4 came,
The sinners gathered to5 that quiet6 flame,
The demons by the other sterner gods
Rejected from their luminous abodes
Gathered around the Refuge of the lost
Soft-smiling on that wild and grisly host.
All who were refugeless, wretched, unloved,
The wicked and the good together moved
Naturally to Him, the shelterer7 sweet,
And found their heaven at their Master’s feet.
The vision changed and in its8 place there stood
A Terror red as lightning or as blood.
His strong9 right hand a javelin advanced
And as He shook it, earthquake stumbling10 danced
Across the hemisphere, ruin and plague
Rained out of heaven, disasters swift and vague
Neighboured11, a marching multitude of ills.
His foot strode forward to oppress the hills,
And at the vision of His burning eyes
The hearts of men grew faint with dread surmise
Of sin and punishment. Their cry was loud,
“O master of the stormwind and the cloud,
Spare, Rudra, spare! Show us that other form
Auspicious, not incarnate wrath and storm.”
The God of Force12, the God of Love are one;
Not13 least He loves whom14 most He smites. Alone
Who towers15 above fear and plays with grief,
Defeat and death, inherits full relief
From blindness and beholds the single Form,
Love masking Terror, Peace supporting Storm.
The Friend of Man helps him with life and death
Until he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,
Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away16.
He feels the joy of the immortal play;
He has the silence and the unflinching force,
He knows the oneness and the eternal course.
He too is Rudra and thunder and the Fire,
He Shiva and the white Light no shadows tire,
The Strength that rides abroad on Time’s wide wings,
The Calm in the heart of all immortal things.
Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 5.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 625 p.
1 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Majestic, mild, immortally august,
2 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: In
3 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: deep
4 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: outcaste
5 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: round
6 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: tender
7 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: asylum
8 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: His
9 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: fierce
10 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: reeling
11 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Threatened
12 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Wrath
13 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Nor
14 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: when
15 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: rises
16 Last part of the poem in 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5:
He feels the joy of the immortal play;
Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.
He too grows Rudra fierce, august and dire,
And Shiva, sweet fulfiller of desire.