Collected Poems
This volume consists of all poems in English including sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms. All such poems published by Sri Aurobindo during his lifetime are included here, as well as poems found among his manuscripts after his passing. Sri Aurobindo worked on these poems over the course of seven decades. The first one was published in 1883 when he was ten; a number of poems were written or revised more than sixty years later, in the late 1940s.
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CWSA
- Collected Poems
- Vol. 2
- 2009 Edition
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SABCL
- Collected Poems
- Vol. 5
- 1972 Edition
- Part I: England and Baroda (1883-1898)
- Part II: Baroda (Circa 1898-1902)
- Part III: Baroda and Bengal (Circa 1900-1909)
- Part IV: Calcutta and Chandernagore (1907-1910)
- Part V: Pondicherry (Circa 1910-1920)
- Part VI: Baroda and Pondicherry (Circa 1902-1936)
- Part VII: Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947)
- Note on the Text
- Index of Titles
- Index of First Lines
The Witness and the Wheel
Who art thou in the heart comrade of man who sitst
August, watching his works, watching his joys and griefs,
Unmoved, careless of pain, careless of death and fate?
Witness, what hast thou seen watching this great blind world
Moving helpless in Time, whirled on the Wheel in Space,
That yet thou with thy vast Will biddest toil our hearts,
Mystic,—for without thee nothing can last in Time?
We too, when from the urge ceaseless of Nature turn
Our souls, far from the breast casting her tool, desire,
Grow like thee. In the front Nature still drives in vain
The blind trail of our acts, passions and thoughts and hopes;
Unmoved, calm, we look on, careless of death and fate,
Of grief careless and joy,—signs of a surface script
Without value or sense, steps of an aimless world.
Something watches behind, Spirit or Self or Soul,
Viewing Space and its toil, waiting the end of Time.
Witness, who then art thou, one with thee who am I,
Nameless, watching the Wheel whirl across Time and Space?
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