Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

326 Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907 – 1910
Were then my fellows. But I followed not
The usual path, the common thoughts of men.
A thirst of knowledge and a sense of power,
A passion of divine beneficence
Pursued me through a hundred lives. I rose
From birth to birth, until I reached the peak
Of human knowledge. Then in Bharat born
I, Kuthumi, the Kshatriya, the adept,
The mighty Yogin of Dwaipayan’s school,
To Vyása came, the great original sage.
He looked upon me with the eye that sees
And smiled, august and awful. “Kuthumi,”
He cried, “now gather back what thou hast learned
In many lives, remember all thy past,
Cease from thy round of human births, resume
The eightfold power that makes a man as God,
Then come again and learn thy grandiose work,
For thou art of the souls to death denied.”
I went into the mountains by the sea
That thunders pitilessly from night to morn,
And sung to by that rude relentless sound,
Amid the cries of beasts, the howl of winds,
Surrounded by the gnashing demon hordes,
I did the Hathayoga in three days,
Which men with anguish through ten lives effect, —
Not that now practised by earth’s feebler race,
ButthatwhichRávan knew in Lunca, Dhruv
Fulfilled, Hiranyakashipu performed,
The Yoga of the old Lemurian Kings.
I felt the strength of Titans in my veins,
The joy of gods, the pride of Siddhas. Tall
And mighty like a striding God I came
To Vyása; but he shook his dense piled locks,
Denying me. “Thou art not pure,” he cried.
I went in anger to Himaloy’s peaks,
And on the highest in the breathless snows
Sat dumb for many years. Then knowledge came