Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

CANTO III
So was a goddess won to mortal arms;
And for twelve months he held her on the peaks,
In solitary vastnesses of hills
And regions snow-besieged. There in dim gorge
And tenebrous ravine and on wide snows
Clothed with deserted space, o’er precipices
With the far eagles wheeling under them,
Or where large glaciers watch, or under cliffs
O’er-murmured by the streaming waterfalls,
And later in the pleasant lower hills,
He of her beauty world-desired took joy:
And all earth’s silent sublime spaces passed
Into his blood and grew a part of thought.
Twelve months in the green forests populous,
Life in sunlight and by delightful streams
He increased rapture. The green tremulous groves,
And solitary rivers white with birds,
And watered hollow’s gleam, and sunny boughs
Gorgeous with peacocks or illumining
Bright bosom of doves, in forests’ musing day
Or the great night with roar of many beasts, —
All these were Eden round the glorious pair.
And in their third flower-haunted spring of love
A child was born from golden Urvasie.
But when the goddess from maternal pangs
Woke to the child’s sweet face and strange tumult
Of new delight and felt the little hands
Erring about her breasts, passionate she cried:
“How long shall we in woods, Pururavus,
Waste the glad days of cheerful human life?
What pleasure is in soulless woods and waves?
But I would go into the homes of men,
Hear the great sound of cities, watch the eager
Faces tending to hall and mart, and talk