Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Note on the Texts 709
Poems from Manuscripts, circa 1912 – 1913
The Descent of Ahana. Circa 1912 – 13. The earliest known draft of
this poem is found among the papers that the police seized from Sri
Aurobindo’s room when he was arrested in May 1908. A complete
fair copy is found in a manuscript notebook that may be dated circa
1912 – 13. The second part of the fair copy was subsequently revised
and published under the title “Ahana” in Ahana and Other Poems
(1915). See the note to “Ahana” in the previous section.
The Meditations of Mandavya. 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote the date
“April 12, 1913” at the end of a draft of the first part of this poem.
The incident of the scorpion-sting happened before 14 February 1911,
when Sri Aurobindo mentioned it in Record of Yoga as something
that had happened in the past. In the mid 1930s, when the book
entitled Poems Past and Present was being prepared, a copy of “The
Meditations of Mandavya” was typed for Sri Aurobindo, who revised
it lightly. He chose however not to include the poem in that collection.
The revisions done at that time are incorporated in the text for the first
time in the present edition.
Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, circa 1912 – 1920
Thou who controllest. No title in the manuscript. Circa 1912. Sri
Aurobindo wrote these lines in dactylic hexameter inside the back
cover of a notebook that he used sometime before November 1912.
He was working on Ilion at this time, but these lines do not seem to
belong to that poem. Neither do they appear to be a translation of
lines from the Iliad, theOdyssey or any other classical text.
Sole in the meadows of Thebes. No title in the manuscript. 1913.
Written on the same manuscript page as the following poem, at around
the same time. It is almost certainly to this poem that Sri Aurobindo
was referring when he wrote in Record of Yoga on 21 September 1913
of beginning an “Eclogue in hexameter”.
O Will of God. No title in the manuscript. 1913. Written on the same
manuscript page as the previous poem.
TheTaleofNala[1]. Circa 1916 – 20. There are very few clues by