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 the Work of Poets of the Ashram

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya [7]

Reverie

... Then my heart within me cries

To the skies:

“Art thou jealous, God above!

Of our love?

“Dost Thou grieve to see us stand

Hand in hand,

“On the painted shore of life,

Man and wife,

“Full of dreaming, full of fire

And desire?”

Blossomed His immaculate voice:

“I rejoice

“In the sorrow of the sod,

I am God! ...

Desert

Floated noontides of spirit-austerities nakedly burning on every side

While I stand like a straight tall tree in the centre of Time, a desert bare,

High up, suspended, the full sun seems an image of One who is golden-eyed,

With shimmering beams for arrowy lashes which pierce like liquid points through the air....

I shall see about “The Jealous God” [published as Reverie]; I remember to have read some poems in which you “trifled with Divinity” with great poetic effect, but the suggestions were quite extreme enough to startle A.E. into remonstrance; I imagine the Divinity himself read them with much aesthetic pleasure and a gracious smile.

30 January 1935