AUROBINDO, Sri


The Dreamboat

Who was it that came to me in a boat made of dream-fire,

With his flame brow and his sun-gold body?

Melted was the silence into a sweet secret murmur,

'Do you come now? Is the heart's fire ready?'

Hidden in the recesses of the heart something shuddered,

It recalled all that the life's joy cherished,

Imaged the felicity it must leave lost forever,

And the boat passed and the gold god vanished.

Now within the hollowness of the world's breast inhabits -

For the love died and the old joy ended -

Void of a felicity that has fled, gone for ever,

And the gold god and the dream boat come not.


Life

Mystic Miracle, daughter of Delight,

Life, thou ecstasy,

Let the radius of thy flight

Be eternity.

On thy wings thou bearest high

Glory and disdain,

Godhead and mortality,

Ecstasy and pain.

Take me in thy wild embrace

Without weak reserve

Body dire and unveiled face;

Faint not, Life, nor swerve.

All thy bliss I would explore,

All thy tyranny.

Cruel like the lion's roar,

Sweet like springtide be.

Like a Titan I would take,

Like a God enjoy,

Like a man contend and make,

Revel like a boy.

More I will not ask of thee,

Nor my fate would choose;

King or conquered let me be,

Live or lose.

Even in rags I am a god;

Fallen, I am divine;

High I triumph when down-trod,

Long I live when slain.


O Coil, Coil

O coil, honied envoy of the spring,

Cease thy too happy voice, grief's record, cease:

For I recall that day of vernal trees,

The soft asoca's bloom, the laden winds

And green felicity of leaves, the hush,

The sense of Nature living in the woods.

Only the river rippled, only hummed

The languid murmuring bee, far-borne and slow,

Emparadised in odours, only used

The ringdove his divine heart-moving speech;

But sweetest to my pleased and singing heart

Thy voice, O coil, in the peepel tree.

O me! for pleasure turned to bitterest tears!

O me! for the swift joy, too great to live,

That only bloomed one hour! O wondrous day,

That crowned the bliss of those delicious years.

The vernal radiance of my lover's lips

Was shut like a red rose upon my mouth,

His voice was richer than the murmuring leaves,

His love around me than the summer air.

Five hours entangled in the coil's cry

Lay my beloved twixt my happy breasts.

O voice of tears! O sweetness uttering death!

O lost ere yet that happy cry was still!

O tireless voice of spring! Again I lie

In odorous gloom of trees; unseen and hear

The windlark gurgles in the golden leaves,

The woodworm spins in shrillness on the bough:

Thou by the waters wailing to thy love,

O chocrobacque! have comfort, since to thee

The dawn brings sweetest recompense of tears

And she thou lovest hears thy pain. But I

Am desolate in the heart of fruitful months,

Am widowed in the sight of happy things,

Uttering my moan to the unhoused winds,

O coil, coil, to the winds and thee.