The Kingdom Within

There is a kingdom of the spirit’s ease.
        It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,
        Foam from the world-sea or spray-whisper caught,
With which we build mind’s shifting symmetries,
Nor in life’s stuff of passionate unease,
        Nor the heart’s unsure emotions frailty wrought
        Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon brought to nought
Nor in this body’s solid transiences.

Wider behind than the vast universe
        Our spirit scans the drama and the stir,
A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power
Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse
        That veils it from its ignorant minister,
The grandeur of its free eternal hour.

14-3-1936

Reference: # 60 in “Les poèmes de Sri Aurobindo” (bilingual
edition) (unpublished) all published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram – Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA