Footprints of God

Light was Born

A strong son of lightning

A strong son of lightning came down to the earth with fire-feet of swiftness splendid;

Light was born in a womb and thunder's force filled ahuman frame.

The calm speed of heaven, the sweet greatness, pure passion, winged power had descended;

All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name.

*

Light

(written at the age of 11, in 1883)

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom,

The sun rolled, black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast,

Of the threads of my golden hair....

When I flashed on their sight, the heralds bright,

Of Heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn, the Saviour born —

Joy, joy, to the outcast man!

Equal favour I show to the lofty and low,

On the just and the unjust I descend:

E'en the blind, whose vain spheres, roll in darkness and tears,

Feel my smile — the blest smile of a friend....

O, if such the glad worth of my presence on earth,

Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the blessed,

Ever bright with the Deity's smile....

*

1. Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was sent with his two elder brothers to England by his father for education and lived there for fourteen years. In the later part of 1892 the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Sri Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda service and returned to India on 6 February 1893 at the age of twenty one.

Page 5

At the age of eleven Aurobindo had already received strongly the impression that a period of general upheaval and great revolutionary changes was coming in the world and he himself was destined to play a part in it. His attention was now drawn to India and this feeling was soon canalised into the idea of the liberation of his own country. But the "firm decision" took full shape only towards the end of another four years. It had already been made when he went to Cambridge and as a member and for some time secretary of the Indian Majlis at Cambridge he delivered many revolutionary speeches which, as he afterwards learnt, had their part in determining the authorities to exclude him from the Indian Civil Service; the failure in the riding test was only the occasion, for in some other cases an opportunity was given for remedying this defect in India itself.

Sri Aurobindo

Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati

Has called to regions of eternal snow

And Ganges pacing to the southern sea,

Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow.

Sri Aurobindo

(written on the eve of returning to India)

Page 6