Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

II. Sonnets
1930–1950

The Kingdom Within

There is a kingdom of the spirit’s ease.

It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,

Foam from the world-sea or spray-whisper¹ caught,

With which we build mind’s shifting symmetries,

Nor in life’s stuff of passionate unease,

Nor the heart’s unsure emotions frailty² wrought

Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon led³ to nought

Nor in this body’s solid transiences.

Wider behind than the vast universe

Our spirit scans the drama and the stir,

A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power

Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse

That veils it from its ignorant minister,

The grandeur of its free eternal hour.

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: spray whispers

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² 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: frailly

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³ brought

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