Sonnets

This sonnet was published in the Calcutta Review in October 1934. Two months earlier, Sri Aurobindo asked his secretary to type copies of this poem and three others (“The Other Earths”, “The World Game” and “Symbol Moon”) from the notebook in which they and others had been written.

This sonnet was published in the Calcutta Review in October 1934. Its first draft occurs just after the first draft of “Transformation”, which is dated 16 October 1933; thus it belongs, in all probability, to the year 1933.

Nirvana. August 1934. This sonnet was written while the texts of “Transformation” and “The Other Earths” were being prepared for publication in the Calcutta Review. It was published along with them in that journal in October 1934. There are two handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript of this poem.

Man the Thinking Animal. Circa 1934. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript, the earliest contemporaneous with close-to-final drafts of “Transformation” and “The Other Earths”.

The Silver Call. Written on or before 25 April 1934 (when Sri Aurobindo quoted five lines in a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy); revised 1944. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript; the first handwritten manuscript was written shortly after those of the two preceding sonnets. The original poem went through several versions, eventually becoming two, “The Silver Call” and “The Call of the Impossible”.

1934; revised subsequently. Four handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript. This poem began as a variant of “The Silver Call”: the first lines of the two poems were once identical — “There is a godhead in unrealised things” — and the first rhyming words remain the same even in the final versions.

A might no human will nor force can gain, A knowledge seated in eternity, A bliss beyond our struggle and our pain Are the high pinnacles of our destiny ...

"Rooted in mire heavenward man’s nature grows, — His soul the dim bud of God’s flaming rose."

....A little life wearing the flesh for robe, A little mind winged through wide space to run. It lived, it knew, it saw its self sublime, Deathless, outmeasuring Space, outlasting Time.

"...Our truths discovered are but dust and trace Of the eternal Energy in her race."

What points ascending Nature to her goal? ’Tis not man’s lame transcribing intellect With its carved figures rigid and erect But the far subtle vision of his soul..."

"... An algebra of signs, a scheme of sense, A symbol language without depth or wings, A power to handle deftly outward things Are our scant earnings of intelligence."

"Man’s science builds abstractions cold and bare And carves to formulas the living whole; It is a brain and hand without a soul, A piercing eye behind our outward stare....."

A Sonnet by Sri Aurobindo, written in 1936. Recited by Aravinda Maheshwari.

A Sonnet by Sri Aurobindo, written on March 14, 1936. Recitation by Aravinda Maheshwari.

"Now I have borne Thy presence and Thy light, Eternity assumes me and I am A vastness of tranquillity and flame, My heart a deep Atlantic of delight....."