Though the Savitri-line “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm” is kind of modelled along the pattern of Wordsworth’s “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone”, and though both belong to the Overmind realm, there is a difference between the two, quite a difference. Metrically the dactyl at the beginning and the boosting pyrrhic at the fourth foot of Sri Aurobindo’s line give to it a wide-sweeping and conquering movement, in contrast to his own, with trochaic beginning “Winging through worlds of splendour and of calm” which rather sounds a bit loud; the line would become less effective, in fact hopeless, if it were “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and calm” though metrically still valid. In comparison to this, Wordsworth’s “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone” has a different Overmental rhythm and thought-substance; in it the occult force of “of splendour and of calm” that is present in the other is absent. The reason is, the Yogi-poet of “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm” lives in those realms whereas the narrator of “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone” only receives it from somewhere else whose origin he does not know. To be a part of that world—that’s the thing.

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