Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Chitrangada 317
Between me and those sudden eyes. One bold
Beyond his savage peers stood questioning forth:
‘Who art thou that with challenge insolent
Intruding, from what land of deathless gods
Stormest with disallowed exulting wheels
In white Chitrangada’s domain? To death
Men hasten not so quickly, Aryan lord.’
Hero, thy look was calm, yet formidable,
Replying, by thy anger undisturbed.
‘To death I haste indeed, but not to mine.
Nor think that Doom has claimed me for her own
Because I sole confront you. For my name
Ask the pale thousands whose swift-footed fear
Hardly escaped my single onset; ask
Your famous chieftains cold on hill or moor
Upon my fatal route. Yet not for war
I sought this region nor by death equipped,
Inhospitable people who deny
The human bond, but as a man to men
Alone I came and without need of fear,
If fear indeed were mine to feel. Nor trumpets blared
My coming nor battalions steel enforced,
Who claimed but what the common bond allows.’”