Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

274 Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907 – 1910
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have heard the change of
music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master;
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside
and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the
mortal,
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand
enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights
that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from
celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond
thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour.
An Image
Rushing from Troy like a cloud on the plains the Trojans thundered,
Just as a storm comes thundering, thick with the dust of kingdoms,
Edged with the devious dance of the lightning, so all Troas
Loud with the roar of the chariots, loud with the vaunt and the war-cry,
Rushed from Troywards gleaming with spears and rolled on enormous.
Joyous as ever Paris led them glancing in armour,
Brilliant with gold like a bridegroom, playing with death and the battle
Even as apart in his chamber he played with his beautiful Helen,
Touching her body rejoiced with a low and lyrical laughter,
So he laughed as he smote his foemen. Round him the arrows,
Round him the spears of the Argives sang like the voices of maidens
Trilling the anthem of bridal bliss, the chant hymeneal;
Round him the warriors fell like flowers strewn at a bridal
Red with the beauty of blood.