Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

710 Collected Poems
which this incomplete poem might be dated. Judging from the handwriting,
it was composed towards the end of the second decade of the
century. It obviously is based on the story of Nala, as recounted in the
Mahabharata and later texts, but does not seem to be a translation
of any known Sanskrit work. The passages separated by a blank line
were written separately and not joined together.
TheTaleofNala[2]. Circa 1916 – 20. Sri Aurobindo seems to have
written this rhymed version of the opening of his proposed poem on
Nala after the blank verse version. He retained several lines from the
earlier version unchanged or practically unchanged.
PART SIX: BARODA AND PONDICHERRY, CIRCA 1902 – 1936
Poems Past and Present
These eight poems were published as a booklet by the Sri Aurobindo
Ashram in 1946. (Four of them — “Musa Spiritus”, “Bride of the
Fire”, “The Blue Bird” and “A God’s Labour” — had appeared in
journals connected with the Ashram earlier the same year.) All the
poems were written at least a decade, one of them four and a half
decades, before 1946. The first draft of “Hell and Heaven” dates back
to around 1902, early drafts of “Kamadeva” and “Life” to around
1913. A notebook containing these three early poems was uncovered
by Sri Aurobindo’s secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, in April 1932. He
typed out copies and sent them to Sri Aurobindo with this note: “I have
copied these poems out of a notebook that was being hopelessly eaten
away by insects. I do not know how far I have been able to recover
the text.” Sri Aurobindo revised these poems around that time, adding
a fourth, “One Day”, while he worked. Several years later these four
poems were published along with four that had been written in 1935
and 1936 under the title Poems Past and Present. The eight poems are
reproduced here in the order in which they are printed in that book.
Musa Spiritus. 1935. An early draft of this poem occurs between drafts
of “A God’s Labour” and “The Blue Bird” (see below). Sri Aurobindo
wrote the date “31.7.35” at the end of a later draft. There are two