Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Seven. Pondicherry
Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1934 – 1947

The Ways of the Spirit [2]

Aroused from Matter’s sleep when Nature strove

Into the half lights of the embodied mind

She left not all imprisonment behind

But trailed an ever lengthening chain, and the love

Of shadows and half lustres went with her.

In timid mood were shaped our instruments;

Horizon and surface barriered thought and sense,

Forbidden to look too high, too deep to peer.

An algebra of signs, a scheme of sense,

A symbol language without depth or wings,

A power to handle deftly outward things

Are our scant earnings of intelligence.

Yet towards a greater Nature paths she keeps

Threading the grandeur of her climbing steeps.

This work was not included in SABCL, it was not compared with other editions.