Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Incomplete Poems 57
The voice was now a violin
Shrill-winding, now a startled bat,
And now as linnet’s warble thin,
Now wailful as a gnat,
But gathered volume as of yore
Until with refluent tide,
Like Ocean ebbing from her shore
The murmur ebbed and died.
Like beauty losing maidenhood
Astarte debonnair
Undid the crocus-coloured snood
That bound her glimmering hair.
And up the ladder of the moon,
As white smoke curls upon a glass,
He saw with flakes of glory strewn
A radiant figure pass.
Astarte from her cloudy chair
Paced with her troop of star-sweet girls;
Unfilleted, her glorious hair
Hung loose in cowslip curls.
And like the flower-song of a bee
On April’s daffodil skirt,
A whisper from the smiling sea
In her crocus gown did flirt.
The waters quivering to her wiles
Among the rushes whipped,
As thro’ the net-work of her smiles
Her visible murmur slipped.
But when they wooed her to repeat
Her primrose painted pilgrimage,
She dipped the white palms of her feet
In beds of bubbling sedge.
Again the stealthy minutes crept
On tiptoe to the breathless hour
And loud suspense her riot kept
Till budding doom should flower.