Collected Poems

 

CONTENTS

 

Pre-content

 

Part One

 

England and Baroda 1883 ­ 1898

 

 

Poem Published in 1883

Light

 

 

Songs to Myrtilla

Songs to Myrtilla

O Coïl, Coïl

Goethe

The Lost Deliverer

Charles Stewart Parnell

Hic Jacet

Lines on Ireland

On a Satyr and Sleeping Love

A Rose of Women

Saraswati with the Lotus

Night by the Sea

The Lover's Complaint

Love in Sorrow

The Island Grave

Estelle

Radha's Complaint in Absence

Radha's Appeal

Bankim Chandra Chatterji

Madhusudan Dutt

To the Cuckoo

Envoi

 

 

Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1891 ­ 1892

Thou bright choregus

Like a white statue

The Vigil of Thaliard

 

 

Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1891 ­ 1898

To a Hero-Worshipper

Phaethon

The Just Man

 

Part Two

Baroda, c. 1898 ­ 1902

 

 

Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1900 ­ 1901

O face that I have loved

I cannot equal

O letter dull and cold

My life is wasted

Because thy flame is spent

Thou didst mistake

Rose, I have loved

I have a hundred lives

Still there is something

I have a doubt

To weep because a glorious sun

What is this talk

 

 

Short Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1900 ­ 1901

The Spring Child

A Doubt

The Nightingale

Euphrosyne

A Thing Seen

Epitaph

To the Modern Priam

Song

Epigram

The Three Cries of Deiphobus

Perigone Prologuises

Since I have seen your face

So that was why

World's delight

 

Part Three

 

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 ­ 1909

 

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems

Invitation

Who

Miracles

Reminiscence

A Vision of Science

Immortal Love

A Tree

To the Sea

Revelation

Karma

Appeal

A Child's Imagination

The Sea at Night

The Vedantin's Prayer

Rebirth

The Triumph-Song of Trishuncou

Life and Death

Evening

Parabrahman

God

The Fear of Death

Seasons

The Rishi

In the Moonlight

 

 

 

 

Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1900 ­ 1906

To the Boers

Vision

To the Ganges

Suddenly out from the wonderful East

On the Mountains

 

Part Four

 

Calcutta and Chandernagore 1907 ­ 1910

 

Satirical Poem Published in 1907

Reflections of Srinath Paul, Rai Bahadoor, on the Present Discontents

 

 

Short Poems Published in 1909 and 1910

The Mother of Dreams

An Image

The Birth of Sin

Epiphany

To R.

Transiit, Non Periit

 

 

Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1909 ­ 1910

Perfect thy motion

A Dialogue

 

 

Narrative Poems Published in 1910

Baji Prabhou

Chitrangada

 

 

Poems Written in 1910 and Published in 1920 ­ 1921

The Rakshasas

Kama

The Mahatmas

 

Part Five

 

Pondicherry, c. 1910 ­ 1920

 

Two Poems in Quantitative Hexameters

Ilion

          Book

I

II

III

IV

V

   

VI

VII

VIII

IX

 

 

Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1912 ­ 1913

The Descent of Ahana

The Meditations of Mandavya

 

 

Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1912 ­ 1920

Thou who controllest

Sole in the meadows of Thebes

O Will of God

The Tale of Nala [1]

The Tale of Nala [2]

 

Part Six

 

Baroda and Pondicherry, c. 1902 ­ 1936

 

Poems Past and Present

Musa Spiritus

Bride of the Fire

The Blue Bird

A God's Labour

Hell and Heaven

Kamadeva

Life

One Day

 

Part Seven

 

Pondicherry, c. 1927 ­ 1947

 

Six Poems

The Bird of Fire

Trance

Shiva

The Life Heavens

Jivanmukta

In Horis Aeternum

 

 

Poems

Transformation

Nirvana

The Other Earths

Thought the Paraclete

Moon of Two Hemispheres

Rose of God

 

 

Poems Published in On Quantitative Metre

Ocean Oneness

Trance of Waiting

Flame-Wind

The River

Journey's End

The Dream Boat

Soul in the Ignorance

The Witness and the Wheel

Descent

The Lost Boat

Renewal

Soul's Scene

Ascent

The Tiger and the Deer

 

 

Three Sonnets

Man the Enigma

The Infinitesimal Infinite

The Cosmic Dance

 

 

Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1934 ­ 1947

Man the Thinking Animal

Contrasts

The Silver Call

Evolution [1]

The Call of the Impossible

Evolution [2]

Man the Mediator

Discoveries of Science

All here is Spirit

The Ways of the Spirit [1]

The Ways of the Spirit [2]

Science and the Unknowable

The Yogi on the Whirlpool

The Kingdom Within

Now I have borne

Electron

The Indwelling Universal

Bliss of Identity

The Witness Spirit

The Hidden Plan

The Pilgrim of the Night

Cosmic Consciousness

Liberation [1]

The Inconscient

Life-Unity

The Golden Light

The Infinite Adventure

The Greater Plan

The Universal Incarnation

The Godhead

The Stone Goddess

Krishna

Shiva

The Word of the Silence

The Self's Infinity

The Dual Being

Lila

Surrender

The Divine Worker

The Guest

The Inner Sovereign

Creation

A Dream of Surreal Science

In the Battle

The Little Ego

The Miracle of Birth

The Bliss of Brahman

Moments

The Body

Liberation [2]

Light

The Unseen Infinite

"I"

The Cosmic Spirit

Self

Omnipresence

The Inconscient Foundation

Adwaita

The Hill-top Temple

The Divine Hearing

Because Thou art

Divine Sight

Divine Sense

The Iron Dictators

Form

Immortality

Man, the Despot of Contraries

The One Self

The Inner Fields

 

 

Lyrical Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1934 ­ 1947

Symbol Moon

The World Game

Who art thou that camest

One

In a mounting as of sea-tides

Krishna

The Cosmic Man

The Island Sun

Despair on the Staircase

The Dwarf Napoleon

The Children of Wotan

The Mother of God

The End?

Silence is all

 

 

Poems Written as Metrical Experiments

O pall of black Night

To the hill-tops of silence

Oh, but fair was her face

In the ending of time

In some faint dawn

In a flaming as of spaces

O Life, thy breath is but a cry

Vast-winged the wind ran

Winged with dangerous deity

Outspread a Wave burst

On the grey street

Cry of the ocean's surges

 

 

Nonsense and "Surrealist" Verse

A Ballad of Doom

Surrealist

Surrealist Poems

 

 

Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1927 ­ 1947

Thou art myself

Vain, they have said

Pururavus

The Death of a God [1]

The Death of a God [2]

The Inconscient and the Traveller Fire

I walked beside the waters

A strong son of lightning

I made danger my helper

The Inconscient

In gleam Konarak

Bugles of Light

The Fire King and the Messenger

God to thy greatness

Silver foam

Torn are the walls

O ye Powers

Hail to the fallen

Seer deep-hearted

Soul, my soul [1]

Soul, my soul [2]

I am filled with the crash of war

In the silence of the midnight

Here in the green of the forest

Voice of the Summits

 

Appendix

 

Poems in Greek and in French

 

Greek Epigram

Lorsque rien n'existait

Sur les grands sommets blancs

 

Note on the Texts

 

Index of Titles

 

Index of First Lines

 

Index of First Lines

 

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind

A conscious and eternal Power is here

A deep enigma is the soul of man

A dumb Inconscient drew life's stumbling maze

A face on the cold dire mountain peaks

A far sail on the unchangeable monotone . . .

A flame-wind ran from the gold of the east

A godhead moves us to unrealised things

A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly

A golden evening, when the thoughtful sun

A life of intensities wide, immune

A naked and silver-pointed star

A noon of Deccan with its tyrant glare

A perfect face amid barbarian faces

A strong son of lightning came down . . .

A tree beside the sandy river-beach

A trifling unit in a boundless plan

After six hundred years did Fate intend

After unnumbered steps of a hill-stair

All are deceived, do what the One Power dictates

All here is Spirit self-moved eternally

All is abolished but the mute Alone

All is not finished in the unseen decree

All my cells thrill swept by a surge of splendour

All Nature is taught in radiant ways to move

All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice

An irised multitude of hills and seas

Arise now, tread out the fire

Arise, tread out the fire

Arisen to voiceless unattainable peaks

Aroused from Matter's sleep when Nature strove

 

Page – 743


Artist of cosmos wrapped in thy occult shadow

As some bright archangel in vision flies

At last I find a meaning of soul's birth

At the way's end when the shore raised up . . .

Awake, awake, O sleeping men of Troy

 

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss

Because thy flame is spent, shall mine grow less

Behold, by Maya's fantasy of will

Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close

Brilliant, crouching, slouching . . .

Bugles of Light, bugles of Light . . .

 

Child of the infant years, Euphrosyne

Cool may you find the youngling grass, my herd

Councillors, friends, Rai Bahadoors and others

Cry of the ocean's surges . . .

 

Dawn in her journey eternal . . .

Day and night begin, you tell me

Death wanders through our lives at will . . .

Do you remember, Love, that sunset pale

 

Each sight is now immortal with Thy bliss

 

Flame that invadest my empire of sorrow . . .

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom

 

"Glory and greatness and the joy of life

God to thy greatness

Goddess, supreme Mother of Dream . . .

Gold-white wings a throb in the vastness . . .

 

Hail to the fallen, the fearless . . .

Hark in the trees the low-voiced nightingale

He is in me, round me, facing everywhere

He said, "I am egoless, spiritual, free,"

 

Page – 744


Hearken, Ganges, hearken . . .

Here in the green of the forest . . .

How hast thou lost, O month of honey . . .

However long Night's hour, I will not dream

 

I am a single Self all Nature fills

I am filled with the crash of war . . .

I am greater than the greatness of the seas

I am held no more by life's alluring cry

I am swallowed in a foam-white sea of bliss

I am the bird of God in His blue

I cannot equal those most absolute eyes

I contain the wide world in my soul's embrace

I dreamed that in myself the world I saw

I dwell in the spirit's calm nothing can move

I face earth's happenings with an equal soul

I have a doubt, I have a doubt which kills

I have a hundred lives before me yet

I have become what before Time I was

I have discovered my deep deathless being

I have drunk deep of God's own liberty

I have gathered my dreams in a silver air

I have sailed the golden ocean

I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind

I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self

I heard a foghorn shouting at a sheep

I heard the coockcouck jabbering on the lea

I housed within my heart the life of things

I look across the world and no horizon . . .

I looked for Thee alone, but met my glance

I made an assignation with the Night

I made danger my helper and chose pain . . .

I passed into a lucent still abode

I sat behind the dance of Danger's hooves

I saw my soul a traveller through Time

I saw the electric stream on which is run

I shall not die

 

Page – 745


I walked beside the waters of a world of light

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon

If I had wooed thee for thy colour rare

If now must pause the bullocks' jingling tune

If perfect moments on the peak of things

If thou wouldst traverse Time with vagrant feet

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom

Immortal, moveless, calm, alone, august

In a flaming as of spaces

In a mounting as of sea-tides . . .

In a town of gods, housed in a little shrine

In Bagdad by Euphrates, Asia's river

In gleam Konarak  —  Konarak of the Gods

In god-years yet unmeasured by a man's thought . . .

In Manipur upon her orient hills

In occult depths grow Nature's roots unshown

In some faint dawn

In the blue of the sky, in the green of the forest

In the ending of time, in the sinking of space

In the silence of the midnight . . .

In the silence of the night-time

In us is the thousandfold Spirit who is one

In woodlands of the bright and early world

Into the Silence, into the Silence

Is this the end of all that we have been

 

Life, death,  —  death, life; the words . . .

Light, endless Light! darkness has room no more

Like a white statue made of lilies

Lone on my summits of calm . . .

Lorsque rein n'existait, l'amour existait

Love, a moment drop thy hands

Love, but my words are vain as air

 

Many boons the new years make us

Me whom the purple mead that Bromius owns

Moulded of twilight and the vesper star

 

Page – 746


Mute stands she, lonely on the topmost stair

My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream

My life is then a wasted ereme

My life is wasted like a lamp ablaze

My mind, my soul grow larger than all Space

My soul arose at dawn and, listening, heard

My soul regards its veiled subconscient base

My way is over the Moro river

Mystic daughter of Delight

 

Nala, Nishadha's king, paced by a stream

Nala, Nishadha's king, paced by a stream

Not in annihilation lost, nor given

Not soon is God's delight in us completed

Now I have borne Thy presence and Thy light

Now lilies blow upon the windy height

Now more and more the Epiphany within

 

O Boers, you have dared much and much endured

O coïl, honied envoy of the spring

O desolations vast, O seas of space

O face that I have loved until no face

O grey wild sea

O heart, my heart, a heavy pain is thine

O immense Light and thou . . .

O joy of gaining all the soul's desire

O lady Venus, shine on me

O letter dull and cold, how can she read

O Life, thy breath is but a cry to the Light

O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak

O pale and guiding light, now star unsphered

O pall of black Night painted with still gold stars

O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain

O soul who com'st fire-mantled from the earth

O thou golden image

O Thou of whom I am the instrument

O Will of God that stirrest and the Void

 

Page – 747


O Word concealed in the upper fire

O worshipper of the formless Infinite

O ye Powers of the Supreme . . .

Ocean is there and evening; the slow moan

Of Ilion's ashes was thy sceptre made

Of Spring is her name for whose bud . . .

Often, in the slow ages' wide retreat

Oh, but fair was her face as she lolled . . .

On a dire whirlpool in the hurrying river

On the grey street and the lagging . . .

On the waters of a nameless Infinite

On the white summit of eternity

Once again thou hast climbed, O moon . . .

One day, and all the half-dead is done

One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet . . .

Out from the Silence, out from the Silence

Out of a seeming void and dark-winged sleep

Out of a still immensity we came

Outspread a Wave burst, a Force leaped . . .

 

Pale poems, weak and few, who vainly use

Patriots, behold your guerdon. This man found

Perfect thy motion ever within me

Poet, who first with skill inspired did teach

Pururavus from converse held with Gods

Pururavus from Titan conflict ceased

Pythian he came; repressed beneath his heel

 

Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old

Rose, I have loved thy beauty, as I love

Rose of God, vermilion stain . . .

Rushing from Troy like a cloud on the plains . . .

 

Seer deep-hearted, divine king of the secrecies

She in her garden, near the high grey wall

Silence is all, say the sages

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable

 

Page – 748


Silver foam in the dim East

Since I have seen your face at the window, sweet

Since Thou hadst all eternity to amuse

Snow in June may break from Nature

So that was why I could not grasp your heart

Sole in the meadows of Thebes Teiresias sat . . .

Someone leaping from the rocks

Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor

Soul, my soul, reascend over the edge of life

Soul, my soul, yet ascend crossing the marge of life

Sounds of the wakening world, the year's increase

Spirit Supreme

Stamp out, stamp out the sun from the high blue

Still there is something that I lack in thee

Strayed from the roads of Time . . .

Suddenly out from the wonderful East . . .

Sur les grands sommets blancs . . .

Surely I take no more an earthly food

Sweet is the night, sweet and cool

 

The clouds lain on forlorn spaces of sky . . .

The day ends lost in a stretch of even

The electron on which forms and worlds are built

The grey sea creeps half-visible, half-hushed

The mind of a man

The repetition of thy gracious years

The seven mountains and the seven seas

There are two beings in my single self

There is a brighter ether than this blue

There is a godhead of unrealised things

There is a kingdom of the spirit's ease

There is a silence greater than any known

There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun

There was an awful awful man

These wanderings of the suns, these stars at play

This body which was once my universe

This puppet ego the World-Mother made

 

Page – 749


This strutting "I" of human self and pride

Thou art myself born from myself, O child

Thou bright choregus of the heavenly dance

Thou didst mistake, thy spirit's infant flight

Thou who controllest the wide-spuming Ocean . . .

Thou who pervadest all the worlds below

Thy golden Light came down into my brain

Thy tears fall fast, O mother, on its bloom

Thy youth is but a noon, of night take heed

To the hill-tops of silence . . .

To weep because a glorious sun has set

Torn are the walls and the borders carved . . .

Two measures are there of the cosmic dance

 

Under the high and gloomy eastern hills

 

Vain, they have said, is the anguish of man . . .

Vast-winged the wind ran, violent . . .

Vision delightful alone on the hills . . .

Voice of the summits, leap from thy peaks . . .

 

What is this talk of slayer and of slain

What mighty and ineffable desire

What opposites are here! A trivial life

What points ascending Nature to her goal

When in the heart of the valleys and hid . . .

When the heart tires and the throb stills recalling

Where is the man whom hope nor fear can move

"Where is the end of your armoured march . . .

Where Time a sleeping dervish is

Who art thou in the heart comrade of man . . .

Who art thou that camest

Who art thou that roamest

Who was it that came to me in a boat . . .

Why do thy lucid eyes survey

Wild river in thy cataract far-rumoured . . .

Winged with dangerous deity

 

Page – 750


With wind and the weather beating round me

World's delight, spring's sweetness, music's charm

 

Ye weeping poplars by the shelvy slope

 

Page – 751