Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Incomplete Poems 525
Out of the mountain’s breast to thee I flew
Unknowing, a heavenly envoy to her heart
That was thy own by glad necessity
Before its beatings in her breast began.
All are the links of one miraculous chain.”
The Tale of Nala [2]
Nala, Nishadha’s king, paced by a stream
That sings to jasmine-bushes where they dream
Dropping their petal kisses on the flood.
A mountain purple-vague
Wide-watching, half-reclined against the sky,
The drowsy earth with its stone-lidded eye,
Pressing upon the nearness blue and dense
Its shoulder in a mighty indolence.
The birds were silent on the unruffled trees;
The spotted lizard in a dull-eyed ease
Basked on his sentinel-stone; a lonely kite
Circled above, half rusty-gold, half-white.
Shrill and dissatisfied the wanderer’s sky
To an unlistening ear sailed shadowy-high.
He saw with absent eyes the ripple-run
Of waters curling in the noonday sun.
His thoughts were with a face his dreams had seen,
And like a floating charm it came between
His vision and the jasmines’ virgin glow,
Warmer than clusterings of their moon-flaked snow.
He listened to a name his dreams had heard
Sweeter than passion of a crooning bird.
In long and softly-wreathing sounds were twined
The delicate syllables yearning through his mind;
His beating heart was to their charm compelled.
But now he raised his eyelids and beheld
Possess the air in act to climb and seize