Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram

Arjava (J. A. Chadwick) [13]

The High-flashing Fountains of Song

Subdued the light at the gray evenhush,

As the shadowy helmets of night’s vague host

Make dim the East and the North and the South.

Spendthrift day keeps but a dwindling heap of gold

Low on the westward margins of the sky.

Spirit with wings of light and darkness

Sail through the fast-closing gates of the West

And bear me out of the world;

The world that is frozen music (but the performers were faulty).

Haply the high-flashing fountains of song

Play still in Supernal Eden

And the air is a diamond undimmed by Time’s misadventures.

The unchanging light of the One, enmeshed in the murmuring spray,

Builds all the colours of the soul.

And the speechless telling of mysteries

Leaves them in the song-hidden heart of Light.

I find this superb — in every line. The thought and language and imagery are very beautiful, but most I find that its rhythmic achievement solves entirely for the first time (it was partly done in some former poems) the problem of free verse. The object of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pleasant and verging with the curve or sweep of the thought and carrying admirably its perfect poetic expression. It may not be the only way in which the problem can be solved, but it is one and a very beautiful way.

27 February 1937