Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 1. The Sources of Poetry
Examples of Overhead Poetry

Evaluations of 1934 – 1937 [12]

Mere of Dream

The Unknown above is a mute vacancy —

But in the mere of dream wide wings are spread,

An ageless bird poising a rumour of gold

Upon prophetic waters hung asleep.

A ring of hills around a silver hush,

The far mind haloed with mysterious dawn

Treasures in the deep eye of thought-suspense

An eagle-destiny beaconing through all time.

You say this poem is “not as a whole quite as absolute as some that went before.” ... I am glad you have mentioned that the highest flight is not present here on the whole, for I am thereby stung to make an intenser effort. I should like, however, to have a formulation from you of the ideal you would like me to follow.

What you are writing now is “overhead” poetry — I mean poetry inspired from those planes; before you used to write poems very often from the intuitive mind — these had a beauty and perfection of their own. What I mean by absoluteness here is a full intensely inevitable expression of what comes down from above. These lines are original, convincing, have vision, they are not to be rejected, but they are not the highest flight except in single lines. Such variations are to be expected and will be more prominent if you were writing longer poems, for then to keep always or even usually to that highest level would be an extraordinary feat — no poet has managed as yet to write always at his highest flight and here in that kind of poetry it would be still more difficult. The important point is not to fall below a certain level.

12 May 1937