Old nature sits a phantom by the way,
Old passions may forbid, old doubts return.
Then are there other lives here or beyond
To satisfy us. I will persist, O Lord.
Humanity, acceptable I find
Thy ages that have wept out sweat and blood,
Since all was made to give its utter price
To one wild moment of thy hidden God.
Sri Aurobindo wrote these poems in Baroda in 1901-1902 in a notebook, which was seized by the British police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in 1908. This made it impossible for him to revise or publish them later.