Sri Aurobindo

Translations

CWSA.- Volume 5

Part One. Translations from Sanskrit
Section Four. Bhartrihari. The Century of Life

Miscellaneous Verses

Man’s Will

Renounce thy vain attempt, presumptuous man,

Who thinkst and labourest long impossibly

That the great heart for misery falter can:

Fruitless thy hope that cruel fall to see.

Dull soul! these are not petty transient hills,

Himalay and Mahendra and the rest,

Nor your poor oceans, their fixed course and wills

That yield by the last cataclysm oppressed.

Man’s will his shattered world can long survive:

When all has perished, it can dare to live.