Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Note on the Texts
Sri Aurobindo once wrote that he was “a poet and a politician” first,
and only afterwards a philosopher. One might add that he was a poet
before he entered politics and a poet after he ceased to write about
politics or philosophy. His first published work, written apparently
towards the end of 1882, was a short poem. The last writing work he
did, towards the end of 1950, was revision of the epic poem Savitri.The
results of these sixty-eight years of poetic output are collected in the
present volume, with the exception of Savitri, dramatic poetry, poetic
translations, and poems written in Bengali and Sanskrit. These appear,
respectively, in Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Collected Plays and
Stories, Translations, andWritings in Bengali and Sanskrit, volumes
33 – 34, 3 – 4, 5, and 9 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO.
The poems in the present volume have been arranged in seven
chronological parts. The dates of the parts overlap because some of
the books that define each period contain poems from a wide range of
dates. Within each part, poems from books published by the author are
followed by complete and incomplete poems published posthumously.
Poems that appeared in books published by Sri Aurobindo during his
lifetime are arranged as they were in those books. Otherwise, poems
within each section of each part are arranged chronologically. Poems
written in Greek and in French appear in an appendix at the end of
the volume.
PART ONE: ENGLAND AND BARODA, 1883 – 1898
Sri Aurobindo went to England as a child of seven in 1879. He lived in
Manchester until 1884, when he went to London to study at St. Paul’s
School. From there he went to Cambridge in 1890. Three years later
he returned to India, and until 1906 lived and worked in the princely
state of Baroda. He began writing poetry in Manchester, and continued