Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

II. Sonnets
1930–1950

The Universal Incarnation

There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun,

A Bliss in the heart’s crypt grown fiery white,

The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,

A Silence on the mountains of delight,

A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees;

A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth’s pain;

A Witness dwells within our secrecies,

The incarnate Godhead in the body of man.

Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,

Our strength a parody of the Immortal’s power,

Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal’s way

Hunting the fugitive¹ beauty of an hour.

Only on the heart’s veiled door the word of flame

Is written, the secret and tremendous Name.

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 unseizable

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