Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part One. England and Baroda 1883 – 1898
Songs to Myrtilla

Radha’s Complaint in Absence

(Imitated from the Bengali of Chundidas)

O heart, my heart, a heavy pain is thine!

What land is that where none doth know

Love’s cruel name nor any word of sin?

My heart, there let us go.

Friend of my soul, who then has called love sweet?

Laughing I called from heavenly spheres

The sweet love close; he came with flying feet

And turned my life to tears.

What highborn girl, exiling virgin pride,

Has wooed love to her with a laugh?

His fires shall burn her as in harvest-tide

The mowers burn the chaff.

O heart, my heart, merry thy sweet youth ran

In fields where no love was; thy breath

Is anguish, since his cruel reign began.

What other cure but death?

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 8.- Translations.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 412 p.