I studied Nature like a bookSri Aurobindo
Collected Poems
CWSA.- Volume 2
Part One. England and Baroda
Poems from Manuscripts,
c. 1891 – 1898
To a Hero-Worshipper
I
My life is then a wasted ereme,
My song but idle wind
Because you merely find
In all this woven wealth of rhyme
Harsh figures with harsh music wound,
The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,
A ruby carcanet of sound,
A cloud of lovely words?
No cry oracular,
No swart and ominous star,
No Sinai thunder voicing God.
No smouldering word instinct with fire,
No spell to chase triumphant wrong,
No spirit-sweet desire.
Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear,
Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain
Nor Shelley’s lyric pain,
Nor Keats’, the poet without peer.
Did glimpse the magic of the past,
And on the oaten pipe I play
Warped echoes of an earlier day.
II
My friend, when first my spirit woke,
I trod the scented maze
Of Fancy’s myriad ways,
I studied Nature like a book
Men rack for meanings: yet I find
No rubric in the scarlet rose,
No moral in the murmuring wind,
No message in the snows.
For me the daisy shines a star,
The crocus flames a spire,
A horn of golden fire,
Narcissus glows a silver bar:
Cowslips, the golden breath of God,
I deem the poet’s heritage,
And lilies silvering the sod
Breathe fragrance from his page.
But in a moonlit vale1
A russet nightingale
Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,
Who pours like wine2 a gurgling note
Paining with sound his swarthy throat,
Who pours sweet song he recks not why
Nor hushes ever lest he die.
Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 5.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 625 p.
1 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: veil
2 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: like a wine