Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
Metrical Experiments

The Genesis of O pall of black Night

At first sight your metre seemed to me impossible in English, especially because of the four short syllables at the end of two lines and the five short syllables in two others. English rhythm hardly allows of that — quantitatively it can be managed, but five unaccented unstressed syllables altogether even if it can be done once in a way causes an extreme difficulty when it is made a regular feature of the metre. But it seems that there is hardly anything impossible in the realm of metre and I succeeded after all subject to one change, the substitution of a long for a short syllable at the end of the fourth and fifth lines. I suppose I could have avoided even this concession if I had fallen back on the device of unrhymed verse, but I wanted to use rhyme. However after finishing I found my stanza right enough as metre, but poor in rhythmic opulence, something bald and lame. So I had to make yet another concession; I took the option, used in all but one line, to prefix a metrically superfluous syllable to each or any line. I give you the finished stanza below; if you want to get it such as I originally wrote it, you have only to strike off the first syllable or word in each line except the fifth; but it is better rhythm and better poetry as it is.

O | pall of black | Night pain|ted with | thy gold stars, |

Hang, | hang thy folds | close, clos|er up|on earth’s bars, | O dim Night! |

Then | sleep shall come | parting the | unseen |

Gates and, far|-guarded by | a screen |Of strange Light, |

Free, | safe, my soul | chari|oted in | a swift dream |

From | earth escape | slipping | into the | unknown Gleam, The Ray white. |

I hope you will find this satisfactory in spite of the two departures from your model.

P.S. In Horace’s line upon the eloquence and clear order, I have found that I dropped a word and truncated the hexameter. I have restored the full line.