Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Merci. Je comprends le sens maintenant parfaitement. Voyons! [Thank you. I now understand the meaning perfectly. Let’s see!] I suppose now there is no hitch and it runs with a real Wordsworthian rhythm with the authentic Wordsworthian significance packed therein. The scene of my novel is in Grasmere where I went to see the poet’s cottage – lovely Grasmere. So there are some other citations too from the poet. These I will send you by and by. All in good time – in proper sequence. There is a deal of such poetic passages in my novel. C’est pourquoi [That is why].
Harin has given me some exquisite poems! What a poet – really mon maître – il y a quelque chose même dans la poésie pure à proprement parler [there is something in pure poetry strictly speaking]. What a poem on A.E., the poet I loved best in the West. With all your enthusiasm for 
Yeats Guru, Yeats has meant very little indeed to me, I have never been able to warm up to him, but A.E. – yes. I have often been more deeply moved by A.E. than I could account for – his note rang to me so [true?]. That was why I have been so deeply stirred by Harm’s on A.E. Do write a sonnet at least on him Guru – don’t you think he deserves it – in these days when people pooh-pooh mystic poetry (as Thomson wrote to me) when A.E. still stood to his guns on his lonely heights. Why you really set so much store by Yeats I can’t gather – he is often so impossibly obscure. But A.E. is never so. His has been a note of calm grandeur to me. And it is significant that a poet of Harin’s genius regards him as the greatest poet of this age – barring you. I agree with him. But it seems to me there has always been some diffidence in you. Will you let me know why? Amal also mentions him passingly in his Notes on Poetry for which I groaned to him, for he is in ecstasies over Yeats. Please write on back – also a sonnet if you have time. If not some éclaircissement [clarification] at least. A letter from you has been long overdue to me in reward of my hermit-like dove-like purity anyway if not for my romantic speed in romance-writing.
I do not think I was ever enthusiastic over Yeats, but I recognise his great artistry in language and verse in which he is far superior to A.E. – just as A.E. as a man and a seer was far superior to Yeats. Yeats never got beyond a beautiful mid-world of the vital antarikṣa [mid-world] – he has not penetrated beyond to spiritual-mental heights as A.E. did. But all the same when one speaks of poetry, it is the poetical element to which one must give the most importance. What Yeats expressed, he expressed with great poetical beauty, perfection and power and he has, besides, a creative imagination while A.E. had only a certain though considerable interpretative power. A.E.’s thought and way of seeing and saying things is much more sympathetic to me than Yeats’ who only touches a brilliant floating skirt-edge of the Truth of things – 
but I cannot allow that to influence me when I have to judge of the poetic side of their respective achievements. I hope that will be éclaircissement enough for you – for I have no time for more – certainly none for writing sonnets – my energy is too occupied in very urgent and pressing things (quite apart from “correspondence”) to “dally with the rhythmic line”.