Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

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

The Kingdom Within

There is a kingdom of the spirit’s ease.

It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,

Foam from the world-sea or spray whispers¹ caught,

With which we build mind’s shifting symmetries,

Nor in life’s stuff of passionate unease,

Nor the heart’s unsure emotions frailly² wrought

Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon brought³ to nought,

Nor in this body’s solid transiences.

Wider behind than the vast universe

Our spirit scans the drama and the stir,

A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power

Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse

That veils it from its ignorant minister

The grandeur of its free eternal hour.

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: spray-whisper

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² 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: frailty

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³ 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: led

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