Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

I. Short Poems
1890-1900

The Spring Child

On Basanti’s Birthday — Jyestha 1900

Of Spring is her name for whose bud and blooming

We praise today the Giver,–

Of Spring, and its sweetness clings about her

For her face is Spring and Spring’s without her,

As loth to leave her.

See, it is summer; the brilliant sunlight

Lies hard on stream and plain,

And all things wither with heats diurnal;

But she! how vanished things and vernal

In her remain.

And almost indeed we repine and marvel

To watch her bloom and grow;

For half we had thought our sweet bud could never

Bloom out, but must surely remain for ever

The child we know.

But now though summer must come and autumn

In God’s high governing

Yet I deem that her soul with soft insistence

Shall guard through all change the sweet existence

And charm of Spring.

O dear child soul, our loved and cherished,

For this thy days had birth,

Like some tender flower on some¹ grey stone portal

To sweeten and flush with childhood immortal

The ageing earth.

There are flowers in God’s garden of prouder blooming

Brilliant and bold and bright,

The tulip and rose are fierier and brighter,

But this has a softer hue, a whiter

And milder light.

Long be thy days in rain and sunshine,

Often thy spring relume,

Gladdening thy mother’s heart with thy beauty,

Flowerlike doing thy gentle duty

To be loved and bloom.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 2.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2009.- 751 p.

¹ 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: a

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