Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on Examples of Twentieth-Century Poetry

Richard Hughes

... The air stands still: the very roots

Of all the trees lie still and cold:

— What is it gallops in the dark?

Gallops around that chapel old?

“We are those limber horses

That round your graveyard go:

Can you hear our feet crackle,

See our blue eyes glow?

“We are those limber horses;

Our bending necks are steel,

Our mighty flanks swing all like bells,

Chiming together as we wheel ...

By the way, I read the poem in that paper, The Limber Horses. It is evidently inspired from the vital world — from a certain part of it which seems to be breaking out in much of today’s literature and art. All that comes from this source is full of a strange kind of force, but out of focus, misshaped in thought or vision or feeling, sometimes in the form too, ominous and perverse. For that matter, the adverse vital world is very much with us now,— the War was the sign of its descent on the earth and the After-war bears its impress. But from another point of view that is not a cause for alarm or discouragement — for it has always been predicted from occult sources that such a descent would be the precursor of the Divine Manifestation.

1931