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

Arjava (J. A. Chadwick) [2]

Lift the Stone

Before the chronicles of time began

Or sundering space her canopy unfurled,

The uncreated Over-Thought had plan

Itself to lose — self-offered, form a world.

Smooth as untrodden snow the gleaming Host,

Fraught with all history, ringed by opal pyx,

Shone through eternity rays innermost

{{0}}’Pon[[Why not “On”; it would be more euphonious.]] all symbolic forms that intermix

Silence of Heaven with lisping speech. God takes

His very substance that from Beauty came;

Then with world-urging power He freely breaks

The bread that builds the fabric of His Name.

Seven great realms the fragments make; and we

In meanest dust may touch Divinity.

You seem to me to have acquired already the three most important elements of poetic excellence.

(1) Mastery of the rhythmic form — at any rate of the right rhythm and building of the sonnet form you are using.

(2) A just felicity and firm construction of the thought architecture proper to the sonnet.

(3) A very considerable power of harmonious and effective poetic diction and suggestive image.

The last seven lines are truly very fine poetry — but the whole sonnet is remarkable in form and power.

6 May 1931