Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

510 Pondicherry, c. 1910 – 1920
Rejoiced in lover’s contact; but the mind
Thought of a scorpion and was snared by forms.
Still, still my soul remembered its delight,
Denying mind, and midst the body’s pain,
I laughed contented.
All is attained, attained! The pain is dead,
The striving. O thou joy that since this world
Began, wast waiting for me in thy lair.
O Wild Beast of the ways who torest my soul
With rapture felt as pain.
O cruelty divine! O pity fierce!
O timeless rapture of the nights that pass
Embraced, poignant and pure with Thy caress!
Humanity, acceptable I find
Thy ages that have wept out sweat and blood,
Sinceallwasmadetogiveitsutterprice
To one wild moment of thy hidden God.
Let the whole world end now, since all for which
It was created is fulfilled at last
AndIamswallowedupinThee,OGod.
Who made of Nature here a tyrant? Who
Condemned us to be slaves? It was not God.
Nay, we ourselves chose our own servitude
And we ourselves have forged and heaped our chains
On our own members. God only watched the while
And mocked us sweetly at our childish task.
Then if He seized us helpless in our bonds,
Then if He played with us despite our cries
And answered with His dreadful laugh our wrath,
Ours was the fault who chose that bondage first,
Ours is the folly whom His play affrights
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