Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Note on the Texts 715
failed to meet Dilip’s specifications. He closed by saying: “I have some
idea of adding a second stanza”, though “it may never take birth at
all” (Letters on Poetry and Art, pp. 235 – 36). He did write a second
stanza later. The poem was published in the “Sri Aurobindo Number”
(volume 2, number 5) of the Calcutta fortnightly journal Onward in
August 1934. There are four handwritten and two typed manuscripts
of this poem.
Rose of God. 29 – 30 December 1934. There is one handwritten and
one typed manuscript of this poem. The typed manuscript is dated 31
December 1934; however Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter to a disciple
that “Rose of God” was ready “on the 30th having been written on
that and the previous day”. On 31 December, he wrote to his secretary
that the just-typed “Rose of God” could be “circulated first as a sort
of New Year invocation”. On 2 March 1935, his secretary wrote to
him saying that the editor of a quarterly journal had asked for a poem
to be published, and asking whether “Rose of God” could be sent.
Sri Aurobindo replied: “I feel squeamish about publishing the ‘Rose
of God’ in a magazine or newspaper. It seems to me the wrong place
altogether.”
Note. This note did not form part of Poems (1941); it was first
published in 1942 in Collected Poems and Plays.
Poems Published in On Quantitative Metre
With two exceptions, these poems were written in 1942 for publication
in Collected Poems and Plays. Sri Aurobindo later commented that he
wrote them “very rapidly — in the course of a week, I think”. In regard
to “Flame-Wind” and “Trance of Waiting”, this would refer not to the
composition but the revision, since the first drafts of these pieces were
written during the mid 1930s. The fourteen poems, along with the first
371 lines of Ilion, first appeared as an appendix to On Quantitative
Metre. This text was published as part of Collected Poems and Plays,
and also as a separate book, in 1942. Each of the poems was followed
by a footnote written by the author giving details of the metre used.
These notes have not been included in the present volume, but may
be seen in the text of On Quantitative Metre, published in The Future
Poetry with On Quantitative Metre, volume 26 of THE COMPLETE