Out of the vastness of the original Self,Sri Aurobindo
Collected Poems
CWSA.- Volume 2
Part Seven. Pondicherry
Incomplete Poems from
Manuscripts, c. 1927 – 1947
Pururavus from converse held with Gods
On unseen crests2 of Nature high, occult,
Traversed the tumult of the flame-tossed seas
That cast their fire between the spirit’s poles.
Alone like a bright star twixt earth and heaven,
He reached the crossways of eternity3.
A Soul to our apparent life reborn
Out of the vastness of the original Self,
Journeying in dim momentous solitude
Led by the flickering of uncertain suns,
He essayed the fringe of Night’s tremendous home.
Before him lay the subtle realm of light
Our organed sense conceals, the light that gleams
Across the sealless musings of the seer,
A slumberless wide eye upon our scene.
But destined4 to earth’s darkly pregnant dream
He tarried not on these mysterious shores,
But still descending5 the divine abyss
To new adventure in the eternal Night
Transgressed the wonder-line of things beyond
Abruptly into mortal space and time.
A universe appeared of difficult birth,
The labour of eclipsed and ignorant gods,
An immortality of chance and change.
Bridging the gulf between antagonist planes
He saw the circles of Heaven’s rash advance.
Sun upon sun, God’s sentinels in the void,
Life’s radiant and immeasurable camp
Blazed in the order of the aeonic Will.
But with the menace of the dragon depths
The old blind vigilant Nescience stretched afar
Hungering in serpent dumb infinitude,
And her dark shade besieged the luminaries.
Silence and Death opposed the invading Fire.
And even before he broke into our pale
There came on him a breath from tarnished worlds.
Averse from an obscure material touch
The images of the supernal field6
That he had left sank from the front of thought
And held their session in the heart’s dumb cave;
The glory and grace, the light, the sacred life
Receded as behind a burning door:
Subliminal beneath the lid of mind
The grandeur and the passion and the calm.
His mind became a beat of memory.
Sight, hearing changed towards our diminished scale;
The little views grew great, the great grew small.
As yet some largeness was of inmost things
And he remembered in the formless sense
Proud kingdoms of intense and beautiful life
And love left free to do his absolute will
And dreams at once commuted into power.
Affronting many starfields of our space
And shortening ever the vast lens of Time
He met a smaller movement of desire
Prisoned in the orbit of a few pale globes
And knew in front our little solar belt
Hung casually among the giant stars.
Our7 earth received him mid her living forms.
Her deep inconscient motions packed and mute,
Her darknesses more wise than her small lights
Oppressed again his young divinity.
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: Urvasie
2 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: crest
3 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: infinity
4 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Attracted
5 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: descended
6 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: realms
7 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Then