Sri Aurobindo
Collected Poems
CWSA.- Volume 2
Part One. England and Baroda
Incomplete Poems from
Manuscripts, c. 1891 – 1892
Like a white statue
Like a white statue made of lilies
Her eyes were hidden jewels beneath scabbards of black silk: her shoulders moonlit mountain-slopes when they are coated with new-fallen snow: her breasts two white apples odorous with the sweet fragrance of girlhood, her body a heap of silk in a queen’s closet, her legs were marble pillars very clear-cut, her face ivory flushed by the dawn.
He frowned on her like a dark cloud instinct with rain over a tall white ship at sea.
The full orb of her loveliness revealed as when the fleecy gown is stripped from the shoulders of the moon and she stands naked in heaven.
Her gait was the swan’s in stateliness, the other’s wild and jocund as the sea-fowl, her hair windtost, her eyes sparkling like bubbles in a wine-cup, her face slim and very girlish.
Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 9, No2 (1985, December).- p.130.