Sonnets

"In that small flaming chariot Shiva rides. The One devised innumerably to be; His oneness in invisible forms he hides, Time’s tiny temples to eternity."

"...Unborn I sit, timeless, intangible: All things are shadows in my tranquil glass. My vast transcendence holds the cosmic whirl; I am hid in it as in the sea a pearl." 

25 July 1938, revised 21 March 1944. Two handwritten manuscripts, the first entitled “Identity”.

"This mute stupendous Energy that whirls The stars and nebulae in its long train, Like a huge Serpent through my being curls With its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain."

"However long Night’s hour, I will not dream That the small ego and the person’s mask Are all that God reveals in our life-scheme, The last result of Nature’s cosmic task."

"And yet I know my footprints’ track shall be A pathway towards Immortality."

"I housed within my heart the life of things, All hearts athrob in the world I felt as mine; I shared the joy that in creation sings And drank its sorrow like a poignant wine."

"Thy golden Light came down into my throat, And all my speech is now a tune divine, A paean song of Thee my single note; My words are drunk with the Immortal’s wine."

"On the waters of a nameless Infinite My skiff is launched; I have left the human shore."

"There is a need within the soul of man The splendours of the surface never sate; For life and mind and their glory and debate Are the slow prelude of a vaster theme..."

"Only on the heart’s veiled door the word of flame Is written, the secret and tremendous Name."

"His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze; The world was in His heart and He was I: I housed in me the Everlasting’s peace, The strength of One whose substance cannot die."

The sonnet is reflecting Sri Aurobindo's own spiritual experience, elsewhere described as "... you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what? A sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother."

"Always we hear the tread of Kali’s feet Measuring in rhythms of pain and grief and chance Life’s game of hazard terrible and sweet."

"At last I find a meaning of soul’s birth Into this universe terrible and sweet, I who have felt the hungry heart of earth Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna’s feet."