Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

56 England and Baroda, 1883 – 1898
And with the pelting words of shame,
Like delicate pigments bleared by storm,
The gorgeous colouring of thy name
Is losing gloss and form.
“The night-wind in thy yawning dome
Has made her nest alive with song,
The humming wasps of Aeolus roam
Low-flying in a throng:
The thunder like a flying stork
Clangs hoarsely but aloof,
And lightning with his vermil fork
Has written on thy roof.
The lion lodges in thy gate,
The were-wolf is thy guest,
The night-owl, like a sombre fate,
Wails weirdly without rest.
Thy deeds are grown a haunting rhyme,
A fragment breaking from the past,
An atom, which the meteor, Time,
In his fiery flight has cast.”
With sobs of shuddering agony bled
The silence as with stinging whips,
But Thaliard felt slim fingers laid
Upon his writhen lips.
The soul’s redoubts flung each to each
A ringing challenge round,
To clench the ruby gates of speech
On the corridors of sound.
In dancing dithyrambs thro’ each vein
A dizzy echo sang,
While on the anvil of his brain
The steely syllables rang:
And from the avenues of the heart
Thro’ which the river of being pours,
The torpid life with a sudden start
Recoiled upon its doors.