Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

182 Baroda, c. 1898 – 1902
To weep because a glorious sun
To weep because a glorious sun has set
Which the next morn shall gild the east again,
To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate
Which by that fall a double force attain,
To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife
Joy could not be, to make a terror of death
Who smiling beckons us to farther life
And is a bridge for the persistent breath;
Despair and anguish and the tragic grief
Of dry set eyes or such disastrous tears
As rend the heart though meant for its relief
And all man’s ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes this span
Of brittle life can limit immortal man.
What is this talk
What is this talk of slayer and of slain?
Swords are not sharp to slay nor floods assuage
This flaming soul. Mortality and pain
Are mere conventions of a mightier stage.
As when a hero by his doom pursued
Falls like a pillar of the huge world uptorn
Shaking the hearts of men and awe-imbued,
Silent the audience sits or weeps forlorn,
Meanwhile behind the stage the actor sighs
Deep-lunged relief, puts off what he has been
And talks with friends that waited or from the flies
Watches the quiet of the closing scene,
Even so the unwounded spirits of the slain
Beyond our vision passing live again.