Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Seven. Pondicherry
Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1934 – 1947

Contrasts

What opposites are here! A trivial life

Specks the huge dream of Death called Matter; intense

In its struggle of weakness towards omnipotence,

A thinking mind starts from the unthinking strife

In the order of the electric elements.

Immortal life breathed in that monstrous death,

A mystery of Knowledge wore as sheath

Matter’s mute nescience. Its enveloped sense

Or dumb somnambulist will obscurely reigns

Driving the atoms in their cosmic course

Whose huge unhearing movement serves perforce

The works of a strange blind omniscience.

The world’s deep contrasts are but figures spun

Draping the unanimity of the One.

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.