Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Three. Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 – 1909
Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1900 – 1906

On the Mountains

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom,

Hills of a sterile grandeur, rocks that sublime

In bareness seek the blue sky’s infinite room

With their coeval snows untouched by Time!

I seek your solemn spaces! Let me at last

Forgotten of thought through days immemorable

Voiceless and needless keep your refuge vast,

Growing into the peace in which I dwell.

For like that Soul unmade you seem to brood

Who sees all things emerge but none creates,

Watching the ages from His solitude,

Lone, unconcerned, remote. You to all Fates

Offer an unchanged¹ heart, unmoved abide²,

Wordless, acceptant, sovereignly still.³

There is a soul in us as silent, wide,⁴

Mere, uncreative, imperturbable.

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 unmoved

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² 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: heart and therefore abide

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³ 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Who seek not, act not, strive not nor rebel.

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⁴ 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Like you, who are may grow like Him, as wide,
Alternative (Ibid.):

To be like you, grow like Him, silent, wide,

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