Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Note on the Texts 701
Poems from Manuscripts, circa 1900 – 1906
Sri Aurobindo wrote these poems around the same time that he wrote
those making up the previous section. Many of them form part of a
typed manuscript that contains poems included in Ahana and Other
Poems. Sri Aurobindo chose not to include the poems in the present
section in that book when it was published in 1915. They first appeared
in print posthumously.
To the Boers. Circa 1900 – 1902. According to the subtitle, this poem
was written “during the progress of the Boer War”. The Boer War
began in 1899 and ended in 1902.
Vision. Circa 1900 – 1906.
To the Ganges. Circa 1900 – 1906.
Suddenly out from the wonderful East. No title in the manuscript.
Circa 1900 – 1902. This poem is Sri Aurobindo’s earliest surviving
attempt to write a poem in dactylic hexameters. A fair copy is found
on the same sheet as a fair copy of “To the Boers”, which was written
around 1900 – 1902. This and another draft of the poem were seized
by the British police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in 1908. Several
years later, in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo began what appears to be a
new or revised version of this poem, but wrote only three lines:
Where in a lapse of the hills leaps lightly down with laughter
White with her rustle of raiment upon the spray strewn boulders,
Cold in her virgin childhood the river resonant Ganges.
On the Mountains. Circa 1900 – 1906.
PART FOUR: CALCUTTA AND CHANDERNAGORE, 1907 – 1910
Sri Aurobindo left his teaching position in Baroda in February 1906
and went to Calcutta to join the national movement. Between November
1906 and May 1908 he was the editor of the daily newspaper
Bande Mataram, and had little occasion to write poetry. In May 1908
he was arrested and imprisoned in Alipore Jail. During the year of his
detention he managed to compose a few poems that were published
after his release in May 1909. Between June 1909 and February 1910,