Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Seven. Pondicherry , c. 1927 – 1947
Appendix. Poems in Greek and in French

Greek Epigram

μῶρος Ἔρως ἀλὰος θʹ · ὁ δ᾽ ὅμως ἅ γ ᾽ ἐνί φρεσί ϰεῖται

ἡμῶν, ὀφθαλμοὺς ὤν ἀλαὸς ϰαθορᾷ.

παῖ, σὺ γὰρ ἡδὺ γελῶν ἰοβόστρυχε ϰαλλιπρόσωπε,

διϰτύῳ ἄνδρα ϰαλῷ ϰαὶ σοφὸν ἐξαπατᾷς.

οὐδὲ σοφὸς περ ἀνὴρ σε, δολόπλοϰε, φύξιμος οὐδεὶς·

ϰαὶ πρότερος πάντων δοῦλος ἔρωτι σοφὸς.

This work was not included in SABCL, it was not compared with other editions.

January 1892. Sri Aurobindo wrote this epigram in a notebook he used at Cambridge. At the end he wrote “Jan. 1892 (Porson Schol)”. This refers to the Porson Scholarship examination, which was held at Cambridge that month. In order to win this scholarship, candidates had to take twelve papers over the course of a week. One of the papers required contestants to provide a Greek translation of the following poem by Richard Carlton (born circa 1558), an English madrigal composer:

The witless boy that blind is to behold

Yet blinded sees what in our fancy lies

With smiling looks and hairs of curled gold

Hath oft entrapped and oft deceived the wise.

No wit can serve his fancy to remove,

For finest wits are soonest thralled to love.

Sir Edmund Leach, late provost of King’s College, Cambridge, who provided the information on the scholarship examination, went on to add:

It is possible that [Sri Aurobindo] Ghose was a candidate for the Porson Scholarship; alternatively it is possible that his King’s College supervisor set him the Porson Scholarship paper as an exercise to provide practice for the Classical Tripos examination which he was due to take in June 1892.

Sri Aurobindo’s epigram is not a literal translation of the English poem, but an adaptation of it in Greek verse. Transliterated into the Latin alphabet, the Greek text reads as follows:

Mōros Erōs alaos th’; ho d’homōs ha g’eni phresi keitai

Hēmōn, ophthalmous ōn alaos kathora.

Pai, su gar hēdu gelōn iobostrukhe kalliprosōpe,

Diktuōandra kalōkai sophon exapatas.

Oude sophos per anēr se, doloploke, phuximos oudeis;

Kai proteros pantōn doulos erōti sophos.