Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

26 England and Baroda, 1883 – 1898
Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light.
Nature’s vernal darlings dead
From new founts of life are fed.
Dawn relumes the immortal skies.
Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?
Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
Haste — a million is to pay —
Lest too soon the allotted day
End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
See! the moon from heaven falls.
In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
Shut my heart up; keep it closed
Like a rose of Indian grain,
Like that rose against the rain,
Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
And the airs that burdened be
With such thoughts as shake the sea.
The Lover’s Complaint
O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;
Unloose that heavenly tongue,
Interpreter divine of pain;
Utter thy voice, the sister of my song.
Thee in the silver waters growing,
Arcadian Pan, strange whispers blowing
Into thy delicate stops, did teach
A language lovelier than speech.