SRI AUROBINDO

Collected Plays and Short Stories

Part Two

The Birth of Sin¹

A Drama

Persons of Drama

Lucifer, the Angel of Power.

Sirioth, the Angel of Love.

Gabriel, the Angel of Obedience.

Michael, the Angel of War.

Raphael, the Angel of Sweetness.

The Elohim.

Belial, the Angel of Reason.

Baal, the Angel of Worldly Wisdom.

Moloch, the Angel of Wrath.

Sun.

Ashtorath, the Angel of Beauty.

Meroth, the Angel of Youth.

Prologue

Act One

Lucifer

Master of light and glory, lift thy rays

Over the troubled flood; lift up thy rays.

Obey me.

The Sun

Lucifer! who gaveth thee power

Over the gods that rule the ancient world?

Or why should I obey thee? Art thou God?

Hast thou dethroned the Omnipotent from Heaven

And cast Him down into the nether glooms,

Revolting? Gave He then His supreme command?

Speak as a servant then and minister

Not with the accent that controls the stars.

Lucifer

Who then compelled thee from thy bright repose,

Or wherefore hast thou come?

The Sun

By Him compelled

Before whose mandate tremble all the Gods.

Lucifer

By His or mine. That I will see. Rise, Sun,

And from thy luminous majestic orb

Cast out into the azure hold of Space

Creative Energy and Pregnant Fire

Whirling around thee, while the years endure.

The Sun

Lucifer, Son of Morning, first in Heaven,

What madness seizes thee? What awful force

Darkly magnificent, brilliantly ominous

Looks out from eyes that own no more the calm?

Lucifer

Obey!

The Sun

I cannot choose. Power leaps from thee

Upon me. I am seized with fiery pangs.

Spare me, thou dreadful Angel. I obey.

Exit.

Lucifer

Power to make and unmake the world!

Power grows in me. I am omnipotent.

Children of immortality whose ranks

And brilliant armies people the infinite,

Creatures of wonder, creatures of desire²,

O suns that wheel in everlasting fire,

O stars that sow the ethereal spaces thick,

O worlds of various life! I am your king.

This I have learnt that God and I are one.

If one, then equal! Rightly too I deemed

That God develops, God increases. I,

Younger than He am greater than the Power

From which I sprang; the new excels the old.

Belial

What dost thou, Lucifer, Angel of God?

The infinite spaces murmur like a sea,

The ethereal realms are rocked as with a wind,

All Nature stands amazed. Whence this revolt?

Who gave thee force to overturn the world?

Lucifer

Watch, Belial, watch with me. A crisis comes

In the infinite, mobile and progressive world.

For God shall cease and Lucifer be God.

Belial

Thou speakest a thing that madness only speaks.

If God be God, how can He change or cease?

Lucifer

Watch, Belial! I will prove to thee the truth,

Thou reasonable Angel.

¹ The revised form of The Birth of Sin appears in Volume V — Collected Poems

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² Uncertain reading

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