SRI AUROBINDO

Collected Poems

SHORT POEMS — 1895-1908

On the Mountains

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom,

Hills of a sterile grandeur, rocks that sublime

In bareness seek the blue sky's infinite room

With their coeval snows untouched by Time!
 

I seek your solemn spaces! Let me at last

Forgotten of thought through days immemorable

Voiceless and needless keep your refuge vast,

Growing into the peace in which I dwell.
 

For like that Soul unmade you seem to brood

Who sees all things emerge but none creates,

Watching the ages from His solitude,

Lone, unconcerned, remote. You to all Fates
 

Offer an unmoved¹ heart and therefore abide,

Who seek not, act not, strive not nor rebel.

Like you, who are may grow like Him, as wide,²

Mere, uncreative, imperturbable.

¹ unchanged

² To be like you, grow like Him, silent, wide.