Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

48 England and Baroda, 1883 – 1898
The Vigil of Thaliard
Where Time a sleeping dervish is
Or printed legend of Romance
Mid lilies and mid gold roses
Of mediaeval France,
Where Life, a faithful servitor
Mid alien faces cast,
Still wears in memory of her
The trappings of the Past,
Sweet Lily’s child, that golden grape
Girl prince of Avelion,
Thaliard by early-plucking hap
Star-reaching Mador’s son,
Kept vigil by the impious pool
Beyond the misty moaning sea
To win from warlock’s weird misrule
His soul’s sweet liberty.
For if throughout the monstrous night
Unblest by ave or by creed
By witchèd water Christian wight
Do finger bead by bead
His scarlet rosary of sins
And leave his soul ajar,
What hour the sleepy Evening pins
Her bodice with a star,
Until, the pitchy veil withdrawn
That swathes the looming dune,
The crowing trumpeter of dawn
Blows addio to the moon,
The awful record of his soul
Shall by God’s finger blotted be,
And o’er his drownèd past shall roll
Forgiveness like a sea.