Sri Aurobindo
Savitri
Recitation by the Mother. Music by Sunil
BOOK ONE. The Book of Beginnings
BOOK TWO. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
BOOK THREE. The Book of the Divine Mother
BOOK FOUR. The Book of Birth and Quest
BOOK NINE. The Book of Eternal Night
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1.1. The Symbol Dawn
Book One. Canto One
The Symbol Dawn
01
001 It was the hour before the Gods awake.
002 Across the path of the divine Event
003 The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
004 In her unlit temple of eternity,
005 Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
006 Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
007 In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
008 The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
009 A fathomless zero occupied the world.
023 Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
024 Its formless stupor without mind or life,
025 A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
026 Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
027 Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
028 Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
030 Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
031 A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
032 Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
033 Something that wished but knew not how to be,
034 Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
048 An unshaped consciousness desired light
049 And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
050 As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
051 Reminded of the endless need in things
052 The heedless Mother of the universe,
053 An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
058 Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
059 An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
060 A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
061 It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
062 The torpor of a sick and weary world,
063 To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
064 Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
096 The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
097 From the reclining body of a god.
102 A glamour from unreached transcendences
103 Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
104 A message from the unknown immortal Light
105 Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
106 Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
107 And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
130 Earth felt the Imperishable's passage close:
131 The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
132 And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
133 And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
134 Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.
140 Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
141 On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
142 Here where one knows not even the step in front
143 And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
144 On this anguished and precarious field of toil
145 Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
146 Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
147 Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
186 And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
187 That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant
. . .
205 A narrow movement on Time's deep abysm,
206 Life's fragile littleness denied the power,
207 The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
208 She had brought with her into the human form,
209 The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
210 The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.
247 Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
248 Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode,
249 Outcast from her inborn felicity,
250 Accepting life's obscure terrestrial robe,
251 Hiding herself even from those she loved,
252 The godhead greater by a human fate.
282 Against the evil at life's afflicted roots,
283 Her own calamity its private sign,
284 Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.
307 At the summons of her body's voiceless call
308 Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
309 Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
310 Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
311 Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
312 Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
341 Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
342 This was the day when Satyavan must die.
1.2. The Issue
Book One. Canto Two
The Issue
025 An absolute supernatural darkness falls
026 On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
027 An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;
028 Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
029 And flung back on his naked primal need,
030 He at length must cast from him his surface soul
031 And be the ungarbed entity within:
032 That hour had fallen now on Savitri.
112 And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
113 And the brooding multitude of patient trees
114 And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky
115 And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months
116 Had left in her deep room for thought and God.
117 There was her drama's radiant prologue lived.
124 Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
125 Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
126 Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
127 Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
128 Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
142 As in a mystic and dynamic dance
143 A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
144 Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
145 Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
146 A heart of silence in the hands of joy
147 Inhabited with rich creative beats
148 A body like a parable of dawn
149 That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
150 Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
161 As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
162 Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
163 And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
164 In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
165 One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
166 Recover the lost habit of happiness,
167 Feel her bright nature's glorious ambience,
168 And preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.
246 A creature born to bend beneath the yoke,
247 A chattel and a plaything of Time's lords,
248 Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed
249 One slow move forward on a measureless board
250 In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,-
251 Such is the human figure drawn by Time.
252 A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.
265 A grey tribunal of the Ignorance,
266 An Inquisition of the priests of Night
267 In judgment sit on the adventurer soul,
268 And the dual tables and the Karmic norm
269 Restrain the Titan in us and the God:
269 Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe
270 Guard the Wheel's circling immobility.
274 Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.
327 A magic leverage suddenly is caught
328 That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will:
329 A prayer, a master act, a king idea
330 Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force.
364 A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
365 Empowered to force the door denied and closed
366 Smote from Death's visage its dumb absolute
367 And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.
1.3. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul's Release
Book One. Canto Three
The Yoga of the King:
The Yoga of the Soul's Release
001 A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.
002 One in the front of the immemorial quest,
. . .
007 A thinker and toiler in the ideal's air,
008 Brought down to earth's dumb need her radiant power.
220 Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh
221 He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,
222 And peered into gleaming endless corridors,
223 Silent and listening in the silent heart
224 For the coming of the new and the unknown.
225 He gazed across the empty stillnesses
226 And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea
227 In the far avenues of the Beyond.
359 There knowing herself by her own termless self,
360 Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute
361 Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,
362 All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.
451 An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
452 It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
453 Or a dull gravitation drags us down
454 To the blind driven inertia of our base.
455 This too the supreme Diplomat can use,
456 He makes our fall a means for greater rise.
481 Always the power poured back like sudden rain,
482 Or slowly in his breast a presence grew;
483 It clambered back to some remembered height
484 Or soared above the peak from which it fell.
485 Each time he rose there was a larger poise,
486 A dwelling on a higher spirit plane;
487 The Light remained in him a longer space.
534 Already in him was seen that task of Power:
535 Life made its home on the high tops of self;
536 His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;
537 Only life's lower reaches remained dim.
553 Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience.
554 A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;
. . .
558 The voices that an inner listening hears
559 Conveyed to him their prophet utterances,
560 And flame-wrapped outbursts of the immortal Word
561 And flashes of an occult revealing Light
562 Approached him from the unreachable Secrecy.
575 Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
576 A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
577 Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
578 Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
. . .
596 All-vision gathered into a single ray,
597 As when the eyes stare at an invisible point
598 Till through the intensity of one luminous spot
599 An apocalypse of a world of images
600 Enters into the kingdom of the seer.
615 Or she gathered the lost secrets dropped by Time
616 In the dust and crannies of his mounting route
617 Mid old forsaken dreams of hastening Mind
618 And buried remnants of forgotten space.
619 A traveller between summit and abyss,
620 She joined the distant ends, the viewless deeps
696 The inspiring goddess entered a mortal's breast,
697 Made there her study of divining thought
698 And sanctuary of prophetic speech
699 And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:
700 All was made wide above, all lit below.
701 In darkness' core she dug out wells of light,
702 On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,
703 Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts
809 A genius heightened in his body's cells
810 That knew the meaning of his fate-hedged works
811 Akin to the march of unaccomplished Powers
812 Beyond life's arc in spirit's immensities.
813 Apart he lived in his mind's solitude,
814 A demigod shaping the lives of men:
815 One soul's ambition lifted up the race;
. . .
819 He drew the energies that transmute an age.
1.4. The Secret Knowledge
Book One. Canto Four
The Secret Knowledge
001 On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.
002 Our early approaches to the Infinite
003 Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge
004 While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.
005 What now we see is a shadow of what must come.
033 A shapeless memory lingers in us still
034 And sometimes, when our sight is turned within,
035 Earth's ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;
036 There is a short miraculous escape.
040 Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
041 Still regions of imperishable Light,
042 All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
043 And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
044 And calm immensities of spirit space.
111 A treasure of honey in the combs of God,
112 A Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,
113 It is our glory of the flame of God,
114 Our golden fountain of the world's delight,
115 An immortality cowled in the cape of death,
116 The shape of our unborn divinity.
160 Along a path of aeons serpentine
161 In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
162 The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.
163 A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
164 A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
165 A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
166 In her unconscious orbit through the Void
167 Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
168 A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;
178 Ignorant and weary and invincible,
179 She seeks through the soul's war and quivering pain
180 The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
181 A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
185 A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,
186 Her state she learns to read and the act she has done,
187 But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,
188 Herself and all of which she is the sign.
199 A vision meets her of supernal Powers
200 That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
201 Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.
202 Then is she moved to all that she is not
203 And stretches arms to what was never hers.
204 Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
205 Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods
206 Soliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time
207 What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
208 A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
209 A Will expressive of soul's deity,
210 A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
211 A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.
332 In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,
. . .
338 A few shall see what none yet understands;
339 God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
340 For man shall not know the coming till its hour
341 And belief shall be not till the work is done.
394 In the wide signless ether of the Self,
395 In the unchanging Silence white and nude,
396 Aloof, resplendent like gold dazzling suns
397 Veiled by the ray no mortal eye can bear,
398 The Spirit's bare and absolute potencies
399 Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.
467 An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.
468 It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;
469 In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe
470 The one inevitable supreme result
471 No will can take away and no doom change,
472 The crown of conscious Immortality,
473 The godhead promised to our struggling souls
474 When first man's heart dared death and suffered life.
499 In the mystery of the deeps that God has built
500 For his abode below the Thinker's sight,
. . .
506 In this gold dome on a black dragon base,
507 The conscious Force that acts in Nature's breast,
508 A dark-robed labourer in the cosmic scheme
509 Carrying clay images of unborn gods,
. . .
513 Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge.
551 There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
552 In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
553 And light and darkness are their eyes' interchange;
627 His works, his thoughts have been devised by her,
628 His being is a mirror vast of hers:
629 Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
630 His deeds obey her heart's unspoken demands:
736 The master of existence lurks in us
737 And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
738 In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.
739 The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
740 He has made the universe his pastime's field,
741 A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
771 Then in a figure of divinity
772 The Maker shall recast us and impose
773 A plan of godhead on the mortal's mould
774 Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
775 Touching the moment with eternity.
776 This transfiguration is earth's due to heaven:
777 A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
778 His nature we must put on as he put ours;
779 We are sons of God and must be even as he:
780 His human portion, we must grow divine.
781 Our life is a paradox with God for key.
786 For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
787 The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.
824 He is the explorer and the mariner
825 On a secret inner ocean without bourne:
826 He is the adventurer and cosmologist
827 Of a magic earth's obscure geography.
873 Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks,
. . .
884 He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
885 He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
886 Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
887 Its images veiling infinity.
888 Earth's borders recede and the terrestrial air
889 Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
. . .
892 The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
893 Into Eyes that look upon eternity.
894 A greater world Time's traveller must explore.
895 At last he hears a chanting on the heights
896 And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
897 He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
898 And passes over the edge of mortal sight
899 To a new vision of himself and things.
921 But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
922 Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
923 In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
924 Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep,
925 Through the thunder's roar and through the windless hush,
926 Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
927 He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
928 Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
929 Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
930 He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
931 A new mind and body in the city of God
931 And enshrine the Immortal in his glory's house
932 And make the finite one with Infinity.
941 A power is on him from her occult force
942 That ties him to his own creation's fate,
943 And never can the mighty Traveller rest
944 And never can the mystic voyage cease
945 Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
946 And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
947 As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
948 For this is sure that he and she are one;
957 This constant will she covered with her sport,
958 To evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,
959 With the Truth-Light strike earth's massive roots of trance,
960 Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
961 And raise a lost Power from its python sleep
962 That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
963 And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.
964 For this he left his white infinity
965 And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,
966 That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.
1.5. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness
Book One. Canto Five
The Yoga of the King:
The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness
001 This knowledge first he had of time-born men.
002 Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
003 That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight,
004 He found the occult cave, the mystic door
005 Near to the well of vision in the soul,
006 And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
007 In the silent space where all is for ever known.
020 There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
021 Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
022 And there the tables of the sacred Law,
. . .
027 The symbol powers of number and of form,
028 And the secret code of the history of the world
029 And Nature's correspondence with the soul
030 Are written in the mystic heart of Life.
031 In the glow of the spirit's room of memories
032 He could recover the luminous marginal notes
033 Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll,
071 He saw the unshaped thought in soulless forms,
072 Knew Matter pregnant with spiritual sense,
073 Mind dare the study of the Unknowable,
074 Life its gestation of the Golden Child.
079 A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
080 A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
081 A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
082 And Fate revealed a chain of seeing Will;
083 A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
084 In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.
085 A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
086 And to discern the superhuman's form
087 He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
088 Aspiring to bring down a greater world.
129 A packed assemblage of crude tentative lives
130 Are pieced into a tessellated whole.
158 An animal with some instincts of a god,
159 His life a story too common to be told,
160 His deeds a number summing up to nought,
161 His consciousness a torch lit to be quenched,
162 His hope a star above a cradle and grave.
174 Impassive he lived immune from earthly hopes,
175 A figure in the ineffable Witness' shrine
176 Pacing the vast cathedral of his thoughts
177 Under its arches dim with infinity
178 And heavenward brooding of invisible wings.
184 A universal light was in his eyes,
185 A golden influx flowed through heart and brain;
186 A Force came down into his mortal limbs,
187 A current from eternal seas of Bliss;
188 He felt the invasion and the nameless joy.
207 One-pointed to the immaculate Delight,
208 Questing for God as for a splendid prey,
209 He mounted burning like a cone of fire.
238 His spirit mingles with eternity's heart
239 And bears the silence of the Infinite.
251 His nature shuddered in the Unknown's grasp.
. . .
256 In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
257 Hurried into unimaginable depths,
258 Upborne into immeasurable heights,
259 It was torn out from its mortality
260 And underwent a new and bourneless change.
267 As when a timeless Eye annuls the hours
268 Abolishing the agent and the act,
269 So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure:
270 His wakened mind became an empty slate
271 On which the Universal and Sole could write.
290 The little ego's ring could join no more;
291 In the enormous spaces of the self
292 The body now seemed only a wandering shell,
293 His mind the many-frescoed outer court
294 Of an imperishable Inhabitant:
295 His spirit breathed a superhuman air.
319 There was no small death-hunted creature more,
320 No fragile form of being to preserve
321 From an all-swallowing Immensity.
330 A secret Nature stripped of her defence,
. . .
333 Lay bare to the burning splendour of his will.
. . .
345 Her diagrams of geometric force,
346 Her potencies of marvel-fraught design
347 Courted employment by an earth-nursed might.
476 A border sovereign is the occult Force.
. . .
494 A magic porch of entry glimmering
495 Quivered in a penumbra of screened Light,
496 A court of the mystical traffic of the worlds,
497 A balcony and miraculous fa‡ade.
524 Ascending and descending twixt life's poles
525 The seried kingdoms of the graded Law
526 Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,
. . .
530 Climbed back from Time into undying Self,
531 Up a golden ladder carrying the soul,
532 Tying with diamond threads the Spirit's extremes.
619 Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight
620 Stretched out in an ecstasy of widenesses
621 Beyond our indigent corporeal range.
2.1. The World-Stair
Book Two. Canto One
The World-Stair
103 There walled apart by its own innerness
104 In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
105 He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
106 Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
107 Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
163 Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
164 These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
165 The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
166 Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
167 The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
168 Has made her soul the body of our state;
196 The divine intention suddenly shall be seen,
197 The end vindicate intuition's sure technique.
202 This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man
203 Shall stand out on the background of long Time
204 A glowing epitome of eternity,
205 A little point reveal the infinitudes.
214 A slow reversal's movement then took place:
215 A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,
216 Of its dense rings were formed these million stars;
217 Upon earth's new-born soil God's tread was heard.
234 A miracle of the Absolute was born;
235 Infinity put on a finite soul,
236 All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
237 A time-made body housed the Illimitable.
238 To live this Mystery out our souls came here.
254 A figure sole on Nature's giant stair,
255 He mounted towards an indiscernible end
256 On the bare summit of created things.
2.2. The Kingdom of Subtle Matter
Book Two. Canto Two
The Kingdom of Subtle Matter
004 He came into a magic crystal air
005 And found a life that lived not by the flesh,
006 A light that made visible immaterial things.
007 A fine degree in wonder's hierarchy,
008 The kingdom of subtle Matter's faery craft
009 Outlined against a sky of vivid hues,
010 Leaping out of a splendour-trance and haze,
011 The wizard revelation of its front.
034 This brilliant roof of our descending plane,
035 Intercepting the free boon of heaven's air,
036 Admits small inrushes of a mighty breath
037 Or fragrant circuits through gold lattices;
. . .
041 And bright dews drip from the Immortal's sky.
054 In rooms of the young divinity of power
055 And early play of the eternal Child
056 The embodiments of his outwinging thoughts
057 Laved in a bright everlasting wonder's tints
058 And lulled by whispers of that lucid air
059 Take dream-hued rest like birds on timeless trees
060 Before they dive to float on earth-time's sea.
115 This wonder-world with all its radiant boon
116 Of vision and inviolate happiness,
117 Only for expression cares and perfect form;
. . .
120 It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs
121 And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,
122 Invests with grace the demon and the snake.
145 A heaven of creative truths above,
146 A cosmos of harmonious dreams between,
147 A chaos of dissolving forms below,
148 It plunges lost in our inconscient base.
149 Out of its fall our denser Matter came.
163 This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
164 From her blind unwilling substance must emerge
165 A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.
348 In us too the intuitive Fire can burn;
349 An agent Light, it is coiled in our folded hearts,
350 On the celestial levels is its home:
351 Descending, it can bring those heavens here.
408 Admired for the bright finality of its lines
409 A blue horizon limited the soul;
412 Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
. . .
421 The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
422 Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
423 Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.
2.3. The Glory and the Fall of Life
Book Two. Canto Three
The Glory and the Fall of Life
046 In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes
047 She swept through the race-fields of Circumstance,
048 Or, swaying, she tossed between her heights and deeps,
049 Uplifted or broken on Time's inconstant wheel.
104 Above him in a new celestial vault
105 Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
106 As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
107 An archipelago of laughter and fire,
108 Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
150 In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
151 Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
152 Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
153 Illumined continents of violet peace,
154 Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
155 And griefless countries under purple suns.
378 The nude god-children in their play-fields ran
379 Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed;
464 When earth was built in the unconscious Void
465 And nothing was save a material scene,
466 Identified with sea and sky and stone
467 Her young gods yearned for the release of souls
468 Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate.
496 Life heard the call and left her native light.
497 Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane
498 On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,
499 Here too the gracious great-winged Angel poured
500 Her splendour and her swiftness and her bliss,
501 Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy.
515 But while the magic breath was on its way,
516 Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,
517 A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.
2.4. The Kingdoms of the Little Life
Book Two. Canto Four
The Kingdoms of the Little Life
082 Adorer of a joy without a name,
083 In her obscure cathedral of delight
084 To dim dwarf gods she offers secret rites.
085 But vain unending is the sacrifice,
086 The priest an ignorant mage who only makes
087 Futile mutations in the altar's plan
088 And casts blind hopes into a powerless flame.
107 Ascending slowly with unconscious steps,
108 A foundling of the Gods she wanders here
109 Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell
110 Fumbling through fog in search of Paradise.
290 The phantom of a dark and evil start
291 Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do.
. . .
297 This was the first cry of the awaking world.
298 It clings around us still and clamps the god.
313 In the enigma of the darkened Vasts,
314 In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite
315 When all was plunged in the negating Void,
316 Non-Being's night could never have been saved
317 If Being had not plunged into the dark
318 Carrying with it its triple mystic cross.
332 A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp
333 Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul,
334 A game of hide-and-seek in twilit rooms,
335 A play of love and hate and fear and hope
336 Continues in the nursery of mind
337 Its hard and heavy romp of self-born twins.
365 Huge armoured strengths shook a frail quaking ground,
366 Great puissant creatures with a dwarfish brain,
367 And pigmy tribes imposed their small life-drift.
396 Beings were there who wore a human form;
397 Absorbed they lived in the passion of the scene,
398 But knew not who they were or why they lived:
. . .
446 Ardent from the sack of happy peaceful homes
447 And gorged with slaughter, plunder, rape and fire,
448 They made of human selves their helpless prey,
449 A drove of captives led to lifelong woe,
536 At first he saw a dim obscure mind-power
537 Moving concealed by Matter and dumb life.
. . .
542 In the deep midst of an insentient world
543 Its huddled waves and foam of consciousness ran
544 Pressing and eddying through a narrow strait,
545 Carrying experience in its crowded pace.
669 A little light in a great darkness born,
670 Life knew not where it went nor whence it came.
671 Around all floated still the nescient haze.
2.5. The Godheads of the Little Life
Book Two. Canto Five
The Godheads of the Little Life
014 He plunged his gaze into the siege of mist
. . .
018 As when a searchlight stabs the Night's blind breast
019 And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear
020 As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,
021 All lurking things were torn out of their veils
022 And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze.
038 Astonished by the unaccustomed glow,
039 As if immanent in the shadows started up
040 Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages,
041 Sprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small,
042 And genii fairer but unsouled and poor
043 And fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost,
044 And errant divinities trapped in Time's dust.
156 An ocean of electric Energy
157 Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles
158 Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,
159 Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;
. . .
164 Thus has been made this real impossible world,
165 An obvious miracle or convincing show.
231 At first she raised no voice, no motion dared:
232 Charged with world-power, instinct with living force,
233 Only she clung with her roots to the safe earth,
234 Thrilled dumbly to the shocks of ray and breeze
235 And put out tendril fingers of desire;
258 Then man was moulded from the original brute.
259 A thinking mind had come to lift life's moods,
260 The keen-edged tool of a Nature mixed and vague,
261 An intelligence half-witness, half-machine.
296 A fragile human love that could not last,
297 Ego's moth-wings to lift the seraph soul,
298 Appeared, a surface glamour of brief date
299 Extinguished by a scanty breath of Time;
. . .
303 Hopes that soon fade to drab realities
304 And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze
305 Kindled the common earth with their brief flame.
310 A spirit that perished not with the body and breath
311 Was there like a shadow of the Unmanifest
312 And stood behind the little personal form
313 But claimed not yet this earthly embodiment.
400 A thinking puppet is the mind of life:
401 Its choice is the work of elemental strengths
402 That know not their own birth and end and cause
. . .
421 Into the actions mortals think their own
422 They bring the incoherencies of Fate,
423 Or make a doom of Time's slipshod caprice
424 And toss the lives of men from hand to hand
425 In an inconsequent and devious game.
540 In a narrow plot he has pitched his tent of life
541 Beneath the wide gaze of the starry Vast.
624 Our seekings are short-lived experiments
625 Made by a wordless and inscrutable Power
626 Testing its issues from inconscient Night
627 To meet its luminous self of Truth and Bliss.
. . .
630 Amid the figures of the Ignorance,
631 In the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,
632 It seeks the truth to which all figures point;
633 It looks for the source of Light with vision's lamp;
634 It works to find the Doer of all works,
635 The unfelt Self within who is the guide,
636 The unknown Self above who is the goal.
651 Across the cosmic field through narrow lanes
652 Asking a scanty dole from Fortune's hands
653 And garbed in beggar's robes there walks the One.
677 A door is cut in the mud wall of self;
678 Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads
679 Angels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,
680 And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream
681 The makers of the image of deity live.
721 This little being of Time, this shadow soul,
722 This living dwarf-figurehead of darkened spirit
723 Out of its traffic in petty dreams shall rise.
. . .
726 Like a clay troll kneaded into a god
727 New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,
728 It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force
740 But first the spirit's ascent we must achieve
741 Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.
. . .
746 Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,
747 Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,
748 We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,
749 Make the abysm a road for Heaven's descent,
750 Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray
751 And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.
754 He through the astral chaos shore a way
755 Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,
. . .
767 The watching opacity multiplied as he moved
768 Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;
769 The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.
770 Around him an extinguished phantom glow
771 Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes
772 The vague Inconscient's dark and measureless cave.
773 His only sunlight was his spirit's flame.
2.6. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life
Book Two. Canto Six
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life
010 Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky
011 Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze
. . .
047 A magic flowed as if of moving scenes
048 That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy
049 Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art
050 In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush
051 On a silver background of incertitude.
087 A spirit was there that sought for its own deep self,
088 Yet was content with fragments pushed in front
089 And parts of living that belied the whole
090 But, pieced together, might one day be true.
136 An Energy of perpetual transience makes
137 The journey from which no return is sure,
138 The pilgrimage of Nature to the Unknown.
. . .
205 A world she made touched by truth's fleeing hem,
. . .
213 It seized in imagination and confined
214 A painted bird of paradise in a cage.
278 She fashions godlike marvels out of mud;
279 In the plasm she sets her dumb immortal urge,
280 Helps the live tissue to think, the closed sense to feel,
281 Flashes through the frail nerves poignant messages,
282 In a heart of flesh miraculously loves,
299 Her eternal Lover is her action's cause;
. . .
310 Only to attract her veiled companion
311 And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak
312 Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,
313 Is her heart's business and her clinging care.
385 In all who have risen to a greater Life,
386 A voice of unborn things whispers to the ear,
387 To their eyes visited by some high sunlight
388 Aspiration shows the image of a crown:
441 All powers of Life towards their godhead tend
. . .
453 A mastering virtue statuesques the pose,
454 Or a Titan passion goads to a proud unrest:
455 At Wisdom's altar they are kings and priests
456 Or their life a sacrifice to an idol of Power.
671 A Sphinx whose eyes look up to a hidden Sun.
866 Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash,
867 Carried from birth to birth, from world to world,
960 These long far files of forward-striving hopes
961 Lift worshipping eyes to the blue Void called heaven
2.7. The Descent into Night
Book Two. Canto Seven
The Descent into Night
137 A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,
138 Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes
139 Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,
140 But hid a fatal meaning in each line
141 And could in a moment dangerously change.
142 But he alone discerned that screened attack.
179 A Power that laughed at the mischiefs of the world,
180 An irony that joined the world's contraries
181 And flung them into each other's arms to strive,
182 Put a sardonic rictus on God's face.
320 Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:
321 Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,
322 The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,
323 Casting a javelin regard in front,
324 Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.
575 Haled by a serpent-force from its warm home
576 And dragged to extinction in bleak vacancy
577 Life clung to its seat with cords of gasping breath;
578 Lapped was his body by a tenebrous tongue.
608 He mastered the tides of Nature with a look:
609 He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.
2.9. The Paradise of the Life-Gods
Book Two. Canto Nine
The Paradise of the Life-Gods
056 A summit and core of all that marvellous world,
057 Apart stood high Elysian nameless hills,
058 Burning like sunsets in a trance of eve.
. . .
061 Their slopes through a hurry of laughter and voices sank,
062 Crossed by a throng of singing rivulets,
063 Adoring blue heaven with their happy hymn,
064 Down into woods of shadowy secrecy:
109 A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feet
110 To heights of unimagined happiness,
111 Recast his being's aura in joy-glow,
112 His body glimmered like a skiey shell;
150 A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable
151 Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became
152 A fiery ocean of felicity;
. . .
155 The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.
2.10. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind
Book Two. Canto Ten
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind
042 But first he met a silver-grey expanse
043 Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
. . .
104 Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
105 He came into a realm of early Light
106 And the regency of a half-risen sun.
107 Out of its rays our mind's full orb was born.
185 Thus streamed down from the realm of early Light
186 Ethereal thinkings into Matter's world;
187 Its gold-horned herds trooped into earth's cave-heart.
188 Its morning rays illume our twilight's eyes,
189 Its young formations move the mind of earth
190 To labour and to dream and new-create,
191 To feel beauty's touch and know the world and self:
192 The Golden Child began to think and see.
207 A small keen instrument the great Puissance chose,
. . .
259 A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
260 First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
261 A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
262 A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
263 For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.
264 Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
265 It takes its stand on Nature's solid base.
330 A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
331 A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
332 A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
333 From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
334 And with its dire edge eats at being's heart.
335 Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire.
407 Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.
. . .
412 Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
413 To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.
. . .
418 Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe,
419 She looked upon an object universe
735 Above in a high breathless stratosphere,
736 Overshadowing the dwarfish trinity,
737 Lived, aspirants to a limitless Beyond,
. . .
742 Two sun-gaze Daemons witnessing all that is.
743 A power to uplift the laggard world,
744 Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought
. . .
760 Beyond in wideness where no footing is,
. . .
763 A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act.
764 Archangel of a white transcending realm,
765 It saw the world from solitary heights
2.11. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind
Book Two. Canto Eleven
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind
134 His privilege regained of shadowless sight
135 The Thinker entered the immortals' air
136 And drank again his pure and mighty source.
154 In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
155 The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
156 Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.
166 A triple realm of ordered thought came first,
167 A small beginning of immense ascent:
. . .
185 The mighty wardens of the ascending stair
186 Who intercede with the all-creating Word,
187 There waited for the pilgrim heaven-bound soul;
188 Holding the thousand keys of the Beyond
189 They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind
190 And filled the life with Thought's immensities.
212 In front of the ascending epiphany
213 World-Time's enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss,
. . .
216 Creators of Matter by hid stress of Mind
217 Whose subtle thoughts support unconscious Life
218 And guide the fantasy of brute events,
219 Stood there, a race of young keen-visioned gods,
220 King-children born on Wisdom's early plane,
221 Taught in her school world-making's mystic play.
399 In a sublimer and more daring soar
400 To the wide summit of the triple stairs
401 Bare steps climbed up like flaming rocks of gold
402 Burning their way to a pure absolute sky.
2.12. The Heavens of the Ideal
Book Two. Canto Twelve
The Heavens of the Ideal
011 At each pace of the journey marvellous
012 A new degree of wonder and of bliss,
013 A new rung formed in Being's mighty stair,
014 A great wide step trembling with jewelled fire
015 As if a burning spirit quivered there
016 Upholding with his flame the immortal hope,
024 On one side glimmered hue on floating hue,
025 A glory of sunrise breaking on the soul,
026 In a tremulous rapture of the heart's insight
027 And the spontaneous bliss that beauty gives,
028 The lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose.
092 On the other side of the eternal stairs
093 The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame
094 Aspired to reach the Being's absolutes.
095 Out of the sorrow and darkness of the world,
096 Out of the depths where life and thought are tombed,
097 Lonely mounts up to heaven the deathless Flame.
152 He through the Ideal's kingdoms moved at will,
. . .
167 A glorious shining Angel of the Way
168 Presented to the seeking of the soul
169 The sweetness and the might of an idea,
170 Each deemed Truth's intimate fount and summit force,
171 The heart of the meaning of the universe,
172 Perfection's key, passport to Paradise.
2.13. In the Self of Mind
Book Two. Canto Thirteen
In the Self of Mind
010 He stood on a wide arc of summit Space
011 Alone with an enormous Self of Mind
012 Which held all life in a corner of its vasts.
052 There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
053 His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.
054 Then suddenly a luminous finger fell
055 On all things seen or touched or heard or felt
056 And showed his mind that nothing could be known;
057 That must be reached from which all knowledge comes.
058 The sceptic Ray disrupted all that seems
059 And smote at the very roots of thought and sense.
158 A rumour and a movement and a call,
159 A foaming mass, a cry innumerable
160 Rolled ever upon the ocean surge of Life
. . .
168 A huge creator Death, a mystic Void,
169 For ever sustaining the irrational cry,
170 For ever excluding the supernal Word,
171 Motionless, refusing question and response,
172 Reposed beneath the voices and the march
173 The dim Inconscient's dumb incertitude.
2.14. The World-Soul
Book Two. Canto Fourteen
The World-Soul
002 In a far shimmering background of Mind-Space
003 A glowing mouth was seen, a luminous shaft;
004 A recluse gate it seemed, musing on joy,
005 A veiled retreat and escape to mystery.
. . .
018 As if a message from the world's deep soul,
019 An intimation of a lurking joy
020 That flowed out from a cup of brooding bliss,
021 There shimmered stealing out into the Mind
022 A mute and quivering ecstasy of light,
023 A passion and delicacy of roseate fire.
209 Along a road of pure interior light,
210 Alone between tremendous Presences,
211 Under the watching eyes of nameless Gods,
212 His soul passed on, a single conscious power,
. . .
215 To the source of all things human and divine.
216 There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
217 The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
218 A single being in two bodies clasped,
219 A diarchy of two united souls,
220 Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
. . .
222 Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
223 Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.
238 His spirit was made a vessel of her force;
239 Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
240 He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.
258 He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.
2.15. The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge
Book Two. Canto Fifteen
The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge
103 On the last step to the supernal birth
104 He trod along extinction's narrow edge
105 Near the high verges of eternity,
106 And mounted the gold ridge of the world-dream
107 Between the slayer and the saviour fires;
120 He had reached the top of all that can be known:
. . .
134 All flowed immeasurably to one sea:
135 All living forms became its atom homes.
136 A Panergy that harmonised all life
137 Held now existence in its vast control;
138 A portion of that majesty he was made.
139 At will he lived in the unoblivious Ray.
3.1. The Pursuit of the Unknowable
Book Three. Canto One
The Pursuit of the Unknowable
094 The universe removed its coloured veil,
095 And at the unimaginable end
096 Of the huge riddle of created things
097 Appeared the far-seen Godhead of the whole,
098 His feet firm-based on Life's stupendous wings,
099 Omnipotent, a lonely seer of Time,
100 Inward, inscrutable, with diamond gaze.
3.2. The Adoration of the Divine Mother
Book Three. Canto Two
The Adoration of the Divine Mother
015 O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
. . .
026 Only the everlasting No has neared
027 And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
028 But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,
029 And immortality in the secret heart,
030 The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
031 The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
087 Abolishing the signless emptiness,
088 Breaking the vacancy and voiceless hush,
089 Piercing the limitless Unknowable,
090 Into the liberty of the motionless depths
091 A beautiful and felicitous lustre stole.
. . .
093 Imaged itself in a surprising beam
094 And built a golden passage to his heart
095 Touching through him all longing sentient things.
138 A Heart was felt in the spaces wide and bare,
139 A burning Love from white spiritual founts
140 Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths;
141 Suffering was lost in her immortal smile.
175 In her confirmed because transformed in her,
176 Our life shall find in its fulfilled response
177 Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,
178 Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.
179 This known as in a thunder-flash of God,
180 The rapture of things eternal filled his limbs;
181 Amazement fell upon his ravished sense;
182 His spirit was caught in her intolerant flame.
183 Once seen, his heart acknowledged only her.
3.3. The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
Book Three. Canto Three
The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
213 The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
214 To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
215 All mind was a single harp of many strings,
216 All life a song of many meeting lives;
217 For worlds were many, but the Self was one.
218 This knowledge now was made a cosmos' seed:
219 This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,
222 It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.
248 None was apart, none lived for himself alone,
249 Each lived for God in him and God in all,
250 Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.
300 In these new worlds projected he became
301 A portion of the universal gaze,
302 A station of the all-inhabiting light,
303 A ripple on a single sea of peace.
407 Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,
408 A mystery drama of divine delight,
. . .
413 An ardent hunt of soul looking for soul,
414 A seeking and a finding as of gods.
424 There substance was a resonant harp of self,
425 A net for the constant lightnings of the spirit,
. . .
432 Its bodies woven by a divine sense
433 Prolonged the nearness of soul's clasp with soul;
528. All had not ceased in the unbounded hush.
529. His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone
530. Far down below him like a lamp in night;
. . .
539. In the centre of his vast and fateful trance
540. Half-way between his free and fallen selves,
541. Interceding twixt God's day and the mortal's night,
542. Accepting worship as its single law,
. . .
546. To her it turned for whom it willed to be.
3.4. The Vision and the Boon
Book Three. Canto Four
The Vision and the Boon
007 An Influence had approached the mortal range,
008 A boundless Heart was near his longing heart,
009 A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.
028 Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed, a mighty Face
029 Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;
339 A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;
346. I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
347. Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
348. Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
349. Forerunners of a divine multitude,
350. Out of the paths of the morning star they came
351. Into the little room of mortal life.
429 "O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
430 One shall descend and break the iron Law,
431 Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
483 His soul drew back into the speed and noise
484 Of the vast business of created things.
4.1. The Birth and Childhood of the Flame
Book Four. Canto One
The Birth and Childhood of the Flame
020 Across the burning languor of the soil
021 Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons
022 And stamped his tyranny of torrid light
023 And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.
025 Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,
026 Startled with lightnings air's unquiet drowse,
027 Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,
028 Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark
029 The star-defended doors of heaven's dim sleep,
030 Or from the gold eye of her paramour
031 Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth's brown face.
068 Earth's mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,
069 The hours went by with slow contented tread:
070 A wide and tranquil air remembered peace,
071 Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.
. . .
082 Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread
083 And scanning one by one the pregnant hours
084 Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,
085 The vigil of some mighty birth to come.
086 Autumn led in the glory of her moons
087 And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools
088 And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands
089 On Nature's bosom still in a half sleep
090 And deepened with hues of lax and mellow ease
091 The tranquil beauty of the waning year.
092 Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
093 And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;
094 His advent was a fire of irised hues,
095 His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.
139 In this high signal moment of the gods
140 Answering earth's yearning and her cry for bliss,
141 A greatness from our other countries came.
. . .
149 A spirit of its celestial source aware
. . .
151 Descended into earth's imperfect mould
152 And wept not fallen to mortality,
153 But looked on all with large and tranquil eyes.
199 Outlined by the pressure of this new descent
200 A lovelier body formed than earth had known.
201 As yet a prophecy only and a hint,
202 The glowing arc of a charmed unseen whole,
203 It came into the sky of mortal life
204 Bright like the crescent horn of a gold moon
205 Returning in a faint illumined eve.
215 But soon the link of soul with form grew sure;
216 Flooded was the dim cave with slow conscient light,
217 The seed grew into a delicate marvellous bud,
218 The bud disclosed a great and heavenly bloom.
219 At once she seemed to found a mightier race.
. . .
229 Her nature dwelt in a strong separate air
230 Like a strange bird with large rich-coloured breast
231 That sojourns on a secret fruited bough,
232 Lost in the emerald glory of the woods
233 Or flies above divine unreachable tops.
335 An image made of heaven's transparent light.
336 Its charm recalled things seen in vision's hours,
337 A golden bridge spanning a faery flood,
338 A moon-touched palm-tree single by a lake
339 Companion of the wide and glimmering peace,
340 A murmur as of leaves in Paradise
341 Moving when feet of the Immortals pass,
342 A fiery halo over sleeping hills,
343 A strange and starry head alone in Night.
4.2. The Growth of the Flame
Book Four. Canto Two
The Growth of the Flame
001 A land of mountains and wide sun-beat plains
002 And giant rivers pacing to vast seas,
003 A field of creation and spiritual hush,
004 Silence swallowing life's acts into the deeps,
005 Of thought's transcendent climb and heavenward leap,
006 A brooding world of reverie and trance,
007 Filled with the mightiest works of God and man,
008 Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine
009 And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home,
010 Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.
152 A friend and yet too great wholly to know,
153 She walked in their front towards a greater light,
154 Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls,
155 One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.
205 They were moved by her towards great unknown things,
. . .
208 Some turned to her against their nature's bent;
209 Divided between wonder and revolt,
. . .
212 Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts
213 Hugging the bonds close of which they most complained,
214 Murmured at a yoke they would have wept to lose,
215 The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love:
265 The Force in her drew earth's subhuman broods;
266 And to her spirit's large and free delight
267 She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
268 Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
269 They answered to her with the simple heart.
301 A key to a Light still kept in being's cave,
302 The sun-word of an ancient mystery's sense,
303 Her name ran murmuring on the lips of men
312 No equal heart came close to join her heart,
. . .
335 Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt,
336 Apart in herself until her hour of fate.
4.3. The Call to the Quest
Book Four. Canto Three
The Call to the Quest
001 A morn that seemed a new creation's front,
002 Bringing a greater sunlight, happier skies,
003 Came burdened with a beauty moved and strange
004 Out of the changeless origin of things.
. . .
014 King Aswapati listened through the ray
015 To other sounds than meet the sense-formed ear.
109 The Voice withdrew into its hidden skies.
110 But like a shining answer from the gods
111 Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.
165 An impromptu from the deeper sight within,
166 Thoughts rose in him that knew not their own scope.
167 Then to those large and brooding depths whence Love
168 Regarded him across the straits of mind,
169 He spoke in sentences from the unseen Heights.
239 Accustomed scenes were now an ended play:
240 Moving in muse amid familiar powers,
241 Touched by new magnitudes and fiery signs,
242 She turned to vastnesses not yet her own;
243 Allured her heart throbbed to unknown sweetnesses;
244 The secrets of an unseen world were close.
255 When the pale dawn slipped through Night's shadowy guard,
256 Vainly the new-born light desired her face;
257 The palace woke to its own emptiness;
258 The sovereign of its daily joys was far;
259 Her moonbeam feet tinged not the lucent floors:
260 The beauty and divinity were gone.
261 Delight had fled to search the spacious world.
4.4. The Quest
Book Four. Canto Four
The Quest
001 The world-ways opened before Savitri.
. . .
025 A guidance turned the dumb revolving wheels
026 And in the eager body of their speed
027 The dim-masked hooded godheads rode who move
028 Assigned to man immutably from his birth,
029 Receivers of the inner and outer law,
030 At once the agents of his spirit's will
031 And witnesses and executors of his fate.
079 Often from gilded dusk to argent dawn,
080 Where jewel-lamps flickered on frescoed walls
081 And the stone lattice stared at moonlit boughs,
082 Half-conscious of the tardy listening night
083 Dimly she glided between banks of sleep
084 At rest in the slumbering palaces of kings.
085 Hamlet and village saw the fate-wain pass,
086 Homes of a life bent to the soil it ploughs
087 For sustenance of its short and passing days
088 That, transient, keep their old repeated course,
089 Unchanging in the circle of a sky
090 Which alters not above our mortal toil.
091 Away from this thinking creature's burdened hours
092 To free and griefless spaces now she turned
. . .
094 Here was the childhood of primaeval earth,
. . .
097 Imperial acres of the eternal sower
098 And wind-stirred grass-lands winking in the sun:
099 Or mid green musing of woods and rough-browed hills,
100 In the grove's murmurous bee-air humming wild
101 Or past the long lapsing voice of silver floods
102 Like a swift hope journeying among its dreams
103 Hastened the chariot of the golden bride.
131 The bosom of our mother kept for us still
132 Her austere regions and her musing depths,
133 Her impersonal reaches lonely and inspired
134 And the mightinesses of her rapture haunts.
. . .
147 August, exulting in her Maker's eye,
148 She felt her nearness to him in earth's breast,
149 Conversed still with a Light behind the veil,
150 Still communed with Eternity beyond.
190 The seers attuned to the universal Will,
191 Content in Him who smiles behind earth's forms,
192 Abode ungrieved by the insistent days.
193 About them like green trees girdling a hill
194 Young grave disciples fashioned by their touch,
195 Trained to the simple act and conscious word,
196 Greatened within and grew to meet their heights.
259 As floats a sunbeam through a shady place,
260 The golden virgin in her carven car
261 Came gliding among meditation's seats.
. . .
277 Awake in candid dawn or darkness mooned,
278 To the still touch inclined the daughter of Flame
279 Drank in hushed splendour between tranquil lids
280 And felt the kinship of eternal calm.
315 Still unaccomplished was the fateful quest;
316 Still she found not the one predestined face
317 For which she sought amid the sons of men.
5.1. The Destined Meeting-Place
Book Five. Canto One
The Destined Meeting-Place
001 But now the destined spot and hour were close;
002 Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.
. . .
028 Pale waters ran like glimmering threads of pearl.
029 A sigh was straying among happy leaves;
030 Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet
031 Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers.
032 The white crane stood, a vivid motionless streak,
033 Peacock and parrot jewelled soil and tree,
034 The dove's soft moan enriched the enamoured air
035 And fire-winged wild-drakes swam in silvery pools.
067 A matted forest-head invaded heaven
068 As if a blue-throated ascetic peered
069 From the stone fastness of his mountain cell
070 Regarding the brief gladness of the days;
071 His vast extended spirit couched behind.
5.2. Satyavan
Book Five. Canto Two
Satyavan
034 As might a soul on Nature's background limned
035 Stand out for a moment in a house of dream
036 Created by the ardent breath of life,
037 So he appeared against the forest verge
038 Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.
. . .
046 His look was a wide daybreak of the gods,
047 His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light,
048 His body was a lover's and a king's.
085 At first her glance that took life's million shapes
086 Impartially to people its treasure-house
087 Along with sky and flower and hill and star,
088 Dwelt rather on the bright harmonious scene.
. . .
111 Her vision settled, caught and all was changed.
112 Her mind at first dwelt in ideal dreams,
. . .
115 And saw in him the genius of the spot,
116 A symbol figure standing mid earth's scenes,
117 A king of life outlined in delicate air.
118 Yet this was but a moment's reverie;
119 For suddenly her heart looked out at him,
120 The passionate seeing used thought cannot match,
121 And knew one nearer than its own close strings.
. . .
145 Hooves trampling fast, wheels largely stumbling ceased;
146 The chariot stood like an arrested wind.
147 And Satyavan looked out from his soul's doors
148 And felt the enchantment of her liquid voice
149 Fill his youth's purple ambience and endured
150 The haunting miracle of a perfect face.
151 Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth,
152 Drawn to soul-spaces opening round a brow,
153 He turned to the vision like a sea to the moon
154 And suffered a dream of beauty and of change,
155 Discovered the aureole round a mortal's head,
156 Adored a new divinity in things.
164 Marvelling he came across the golden sward:
165 Gaze met close gaze and clung in sight's embrace.
203 There is a Power within that knows beyond
204 Our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts,
205 And sometimes earth unveils that vision here.
206 To live, to love are signs of infinite things,
207 Love is a glory from eternity's spheres.
5.3. Satyavan and Savitri
Book Five. Canto Three
Satyavan and Savitri
017 Thus Satyavan spoke first to Savitri:
. . .
023 How art thou named among the sons of men?
. . .
050 I have heard strange voices cross the ether's waves,
051 The Centaur's wizard song has thrilled my ear;
052 I have glimpsed the Apsaras bathing in the pools,
053 I have seen the wood-nymphs peering through the leaves;
054 The winds have shown to me their trampling lords,
055 I have beheld the princes of the Sun
056 Burning in thousand-pillared homes of light.
057 So now my mind could dream and my heart fear
. . .
060 Thou drov'st thy horses from the Thunderer's worlds.
100 Musing she answered, "I am Savitri,
101 Princess of Madra. Who art thou? What name
102 Musical on earth expresses thee to men?
103 What trunk of kings watered by fortunate streams
104 Has flowered at last upon one happy branch?
112 And Satyavan replied to Savitri:
113 "In days when yet his sight looked clear on life,
114 King Dyumatsena once, the Shalwa, reigned
. . .
122 Heaven's brilliant gods recalled their careless gifts,
123 Took from blank eyes their glad and helping ray
. . .
127 He sojourns in two solitudes, within
128 And in the solemn rustle of the woods.
129 Son of that king, I, Satyavan, have lived
130 Contented, for not yet of thee aware,
131 In my high-peopled loneliness of spirit
164 A visioned spell pursued my boyhood's hours,
. . .
173 The neighing pride of rapid life that roams
174 Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood
175 Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer
176 Against the vesper sky became a song
177 Of evening to the silence of my soul.
178 I caught for some eternal eye the sudden
179 King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool;
180 A slow swan silvering the azure lake,
181 A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;
. . .
183 Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,
. . .
187 The brilliant long-bills in their vivid dress,
188 The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons
189 Painted my memory like a frescoed wall.
209 I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.
210 But still there lacked the last transcendent power
. . .
216 I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs
217 And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.
223 "Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,
224 Speak of thyself and all thou art within;
. . .
227 Speak till a light shall come into my heart
228 And my moved mortal mind shall understand
229 What all the deathless being in me feels.
230 It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought
231 Amidst earth's thronging visages and forms
232 Across the golden spaces of my life."
233 And Satyavan like a replying harp
234 To the insistent calling of a flute
235 Answered her questioning and let stream to her
236 His heart in many-coloured waves of speech:
237 "O golden princess, perfect Savitri,
. . .
309 Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?
310 Descend, O happiness, with thy moon-gold feet
311 Enrich earth's floors upon whose sleep we lie.
327 "O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;
328 I know that thou and only thou art he."
329 Then down she came from her high carven car
330 Descending with a soft and faltering haste;
. . .
335 Her gleaming feet upon the green-gold sward
336 Scattered a memory of wandering beams
337 And lightly pressed the unspoken desire of earth
338 Cherished in her too brief passing by the soil.
339 Then flitting like pale-brilliant moths her hands
340 Took from the sylvan verge's sunlit arms
341 A load of their jewel-faces' clustering swarms,
342 Companions of the spring-time and the breeze.
343 A candid garland set with simple forms
344 Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,
345 The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.
349 A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms
350 She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,
351 Then with raised hands that trembled a little now
352 At the very closeness that her soul desired,
353 This bond of sweetness, their bright union's sign,
354 She laid on the bosom coveted by her love.
355 As if inclined before some gracious god
356 Who has out of his mist of greatness shone
357 To fill with beauty his adorer's hours,
358 She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;
. . .
360 And made her body the room of his delight,
361 Her beating heart a remembrancer of bliss.
362. He bent to her and took into his own
363. Their married yearning joined like folded hopes;
364 As if a whole rich world suddenly possessed,
365 Wedded to all he had been, became himself,
366 An inexhaustible joy made his alone,
367 He gathered all Savitri into his clasp.
6.1. The Word of Fate
Book Six. Canto One
The Word of Fate
001 In silent bounds bordering the mortal's plane
002 Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace
003 Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise
004 Came chanting through the large and lustrous air.
077 As darts a lightning streak, a glory fell
078 Nearing until the rapt eyes of the sage
079 Looked out from luminous cloud and, strangely limned,
080 His face, a beautiful mask of antique joy,
081 Appearing in light descended where arose
082 King Aswapati's palace to the winds
083 In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.
096 He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love
097 With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,
098 Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.
107 Even as he sang and rapture stole through earth-time
108 And caught the heavens, came with a call of hooves,
109 As of her swift heart hastening, Savitri;
110 Her radiant tread glimmered across the floor.
. . .
118 She stood before her mighty father's throne
. . .
123 He flung on her his vast immortal look;
124 His inner gaze surrounded her with its light
160 What feet of gods, what ravishing flutes of heaven
161 Have thrilled high melodies round, from near and far
162 Approaching through the soft and revelling air,
163 Which still surprised thou hearest? They have fed
164 Thy silence on some red strange-ecstasied fruit
165 And thou hast trod the dim moon-peaks of bliss.
166 Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown
167 Hastening bright-hued through the green tangled earth,
168 Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird's call.
214 But Aswapati answered to the seer; -
280 As grows the great and golden bounteous tree
281 Flowering by Alacananda's murmuring waves,
282 Where with enamoured speed the waters run
283 Lisping and babbling to the splendour of morn
284 And cling with lyric laughter round the knees
285 Of heaven's daughters dripping magic rain
286 Pearl-bright from moon-gold limbs and cloudy hair,
287 So are her dawns like jewelled leaves of light,
288 So casts she her felicity on men.
325 Virgin who comest perfected by joy,
326 Reveal the name thy sudden heart-beats learned.
327 Whom hast thou chosen, kingliest among men?"
328 And Savitri answered with her still calm voice
329 As one who speaks beneath the eyes of Fate:
330 "Father and king, I have carried out thy will.
331 One whom I sought I found in distant lands;
332 I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.
. . .
339 My father, I have chosen. This is done."
340 Astonished, all sat silent for a space.
341 Then Aswapati looked within and saw
342 A heavy shadow float above the name
343 Chased by a sudden and stupendous light;
391 But now the queen alarmed lifted her voice:
392 "O seer, thy bright arrival has been timed
393 To this high moment of a happy life;
. . .
512 Hide not from us our doom, if doom is ours.
513 This is the worst, an unknown face of Fate,
514 A terror ominous, mute, felt more than seen
515 Behind our seat by day, our couch by night,
516 A Fate lurking in the shadow of our hearts,
517 The anguish of the unseen that waits to strike.
518 To know is best, however hard to bear."
519 Then cried the sage piercing the mother's heart,
520 Forcing to steel the will of Savitri,
521 His words set free the spring of cosmic Fate.
. . .
531 "The truth thou hast claimed; I give to thee the truth.
586 Heaven's greatness came, but was too great to stay.
587 Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;
588 This day returning Satyavan must die."
590 But the queen cried: "Vain then can be heaven's grace!
. . .
596 Mounting thy car go forth, O Savitri,
597 And travel once more through the peopled lands.
. . .
605 Plead not thy choice, for death has made it vain.
. . .
609 But Savitri answered from her violent heart,-
. . .
611 "Once my heart chose and chooses not again.
612 The word I have spoken can never be erased,
613 It is written in the record book of God.
638 "O child, in the magnificence of thy soul
639 Dwelling on the border of a greater world
640 And dazzled by thy superhuman thoughts,
641 Thou lendst eternity to a mortal hope.
. . .
680 Thou who art human, think not like a god.
681 For man, below the god, above the brute,
682 Is given the calm reason as his guide;
. . .
698 Leave not thy goal to follow a beautiful face.
718 But Savitri replied with steadfast eyes:
. . .
748 If for a year, that year is all my life.
749 And yet I know this is not all my fate
750 Only to live and love awhile and die.
751 For I know now why my spirit came on earth
752 And who I am and who he is I love.
753 I have looked at him from my immortal Self,
754 I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;
755 I have seen the Eternal in a human face."
6.2. The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain
Book Six. Canto Two
The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain
190 Then after a silence Narad made reply:
191 Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,
. . .
273 Implacable in the passion of their will,
274 Lifting the hammers of titanic toil
275 The demiurges of the universe work;
276 They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons
277 Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.
298 The Eternal suffers in a human form,
299 He has signed salvation's testament with his blood:
300 He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
. . .
329 How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
. . .
335 He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
400 "Hard is the world-redeemer's heavy task;
. . .
489 He must enter the eternity of Night
490 And know God's darkness as he knows his Sun.
491 For this he must go down into the pit,
492 For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.
493 Imperishable and wise and infinite,
494 He still must travel Hell the world to save.
527 Haste not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,
528 Open not thy doorways to a nameless Power,
529 Climb not to Godhead by the Titan's road.
530 Against the Law he pits his single will,
531 Across its way he throws his pride of might.
532 Heavenward he clambers on a stair of storms
533 Aspiring to live near the deathless sun.
603 Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.
604 Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives,
. . .
613 Indifference, pain and joy, a triple disguise,
614 Attire of the rapturous Dancer in the ways,
615 Withhold from thee the body of God's bliss.
620 "O mortal who complainst of death
and fate,
. . .
623 Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
624 Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
625 In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
626 The soul looked out from its felicity.
. . .
630 Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
631 It strained towards some otherness of self,
632 It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
. . .
653 As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
654 The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
677 A huge descent began, a giant fall:
678 For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
679 And what the soul imagines is made a world.
689 Then Aswapati answered to the seer:
. . .
694 I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;
695 Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate?"
696 But Narad answered covering truth with truth:
. . .
856 A day may come when she must stand unhelped
857 On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,
858 Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,
859 Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
860 To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge,
898 He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.
899 Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,
900 He turned towards his far-off blissful home.
901 A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,
902 The luminous body of the ethereal seer
903 Assailed the purple glory of the noon
904 And disappeared like a receding star
905 Vanishing into the light of the Unseen.
7.1. The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain
Book Seven. Canto One
The Joy of Union;
the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain
021 Once more she sat behind loud hastening hooves;
022 A speed of armoured squadrons and a voice
023 Far-heard of chariots bore her from her home.
024 A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse
025 Looked up at her from a vast indolence:
074 Arrived in that rough-hewn homestead they gave,
075 Questioning no more the strangeness of her fate,
076 Their pride and loved one to the great blind king,
077 A regal pillar of fallen mightiness
078 And the stately care-worn woman once a queen
079 Who now hoped nothing for herself from life,
080 But all things only hoped for her one child,
. . .
094 They parted from her with pain-fraught burdened hearts
. . .
098 Helpless against the choice of Savitri's heart
099 They left her to her rapture and her doom
201 A worshipped empress all once vied to serve,
202 She made herself the diligent serf of all,
203 Nor spared the labour of broom and jar and well,
204 Or close gentle tending or to heap the fire
205 Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed
206 To others that her woman's strength might do.
253 But Satyavan sometimes half understood,
. . .
256 The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.
. . .
288 Yet ever they grew into each other more
289 Until it seemed no power could rend apart,
290 Since even the body's walls could not divide.
291 For when he wandered in the forest, oft
292 Her conscious spirit walked with him and knew
293 His actions as if in herself he moved;
294 He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.
7.2. The Parable of the Search for the Soul
Book Seven. Canto Two
The Parable of the Search for the Soul
008 Above her brows where will and knowledge meet
009 A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.
. . .
015 As the Voice touched, her body became a stark
016 And rigid golden statue of motionless trance,
017 A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.
. . .
019 Her heart listened to its slow measured beats,
. . .
021 "Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,
. . .
024 O spirit, O immortal energy,
025 If 'twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart
026 Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?
027 Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death."
028 But Savitri's heart replied in the dim night:
. . .
045 Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws
046 Or stave off death's inevitable hour?
047 This surely is best to pactise with my fate
048 And follow close behind my lover's steps
049 And pass through night from twilight to the sun
050 Across the tenebrous river that divides
051 The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.
. . .
056 The Voice replied: "Is this enough, O spirit?
057 And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows
058 The work was left undone for which it came?
076 Then Savitri's heart fell mute, it spoke no word.
. . .
081 A Power within her answered the still Voice:
082 "I am thy portion here charged with thy work,
083 As thou myself seated for ever above,
084 Speak to my depths, O great and deathless Voice,
085 Command, for I am here to do thy will."
086 The Voice replied: "Remember why thou cam'st:
087 Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,
. . .
095 In the enormous emptiness of thy mind
096 Thou shalt see the Eternal's body in the world,
097 Know him in every voice heard by thy soul,
. . .
103 Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death."
104 Then Savitri by her doomed husband sat,
105 Still rigid in her golden motionless pose,
106 A statue of the fire of the inner sun.
. . .
112 She looked into herself and sought for her soul.
7.3. The Entry into the Inner Countries
Book Seven. Canto Three
The Entry into the Inner Countries
031 Then Savitri surged out of her body's wall
032 And stood a little span outside herself
. . .
036 At the dim portal of the inner life
. . .
043 A formidable voice cried from within:
044 "Back, creature of earth, lest tortured and torn thou die."
. . .
046 The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,
. . .
049 And trolls and gnomes and goblins scowled and stared
050 And wild beast roarings thrilled the blood with fear
051 And menace muttered in a dangerous tongue.
052 Unshaken her will pressed on the rigid bars:
. . .
055 Her being entered into the inner worlds.
064 Across a perilous border line she passed
065 Where Life dips into the subconscient dusk
066 Or struggles from Matter into chaos of mind,
067 Aswarm with elemental entities
068 And fluttering shapes of vague half-bodied thought
069 And crude beginnings of incontinent force.
. . .
114 This state now threatened, this she pushed from her.
130 Approaching loomed a giant head of Life
131 Ungoverned by mind or soul, subconscient, vast.
256 Then journeying forward through the self's wide hush
257 She came into a brilliant ordered Space.
258 There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;
259 A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.
. . .
371 There one stood forth who bore authority
372 On an important brow and held a rod;
. . .
375 His sentences savoured the oracle.
376 "Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world,
. . .
379 O aspirant to the perfect way of life,
380 Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.
397 Savitri replied casting into his world
398 Sight's deep release, the heart's questioning inner voice:
. . .
401 "Happy are they who in this chaos of things,
402 This coming and going of the feet of Time,
403 Can find the single Truth, the eternal Law:
404 Untouched they live by hope and doubt and fear.
. . .
409 Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock.
410 But I must pass leaving the ended search,
411 Truth's rounded outcome firm, immutable
412 And this harmonic building of world-fact,
413 This ordered knowledge of apparent things.
414 Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul."
415 None answered in that bright contented world,
. . .
419 But some murmured, passers-by from kindred spheres:
420 Each by his credo judged the thought she spoke.
421 "Who then is this who knows not that the soul
422 Is a least gland or a secretion's fault
. . .
429 But others, "Nay, it is her spirit she seeks.
. . .
433 But none has touched its limbs or seen its face.
. . .
440 Another with mystic and unsatisfied eyes
441 Who loved his slain belief and mourned its death,
442 "Is there one left who seeks for a Beyond?
443 Can still the path be found, opened the gate?"
444 So she fared on across her silent self.
445 To a road she came thronged with an ardent crowd
. . .
451 Guests from the cavern of the secret soul.
. . .
461 And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd,
. . .
463 Longed once to hasten like them to save God's world;
. . .
471 Outstretching her hands to stay the throng she cried:
472 "O happy company of luminous gods,
473 Reveal, who know, the road that I must tread,-
. . .
475 To find the birthplace of the occult Fire
476 And the deep mansion of my secret soul."
477 One answered pointing to a silence dim
478 On a remote extremity of sleep
479 In some far background of the inner world.
480 "O Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come.
. . .
491 Follow the world's winding highway to its source.
492 There in the silence few have ever reached,
493 Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone
494 And the deep cavern of thy secret soul."
495 Then Savitri following the great winding road
496 Came where it dwindled into a narrow path
497 Trod only by rare wounded pilgrim feet.
498 A few bright forms emerged from unknown depths
499 And looked at her with calm immortal eyes.
500 There was no sound to break the brooding hush;
501 One felt the silent nearness of the soul.
7.4. The Triple Soul-Forces
Book Seven. Canto Four
The Triple Soul-Forces
001 Here from a low and prone and listless ground
002 The passion of the first ascent began;
. . .
004 A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe.
. . .
016 The Mother of the seven sorrows bore
017 The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:
. . .
025 In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke:
026 "O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
027 To share the suffering of the world I came,
028 I draw my children's pangs into my breast.
. . .
087 I am the hope that looks towards my God,
088 My God who never came to me till now;
089 His voice I hear that ever says `I come':
090 I know that one day he shall come at last."
091 She ceased, and like an echo from below
092 Answering her pathos of divine complaint
093 A voice of wrath took up the dire refrain,
. . .
097 "I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
098 Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
099 To enjoy my agony God built the earth,
100 My passion he has made his drama's theme.
. . .
153 I am the doer of demoniac deeds;
154 I was made for evil, evil is my lot;
. . .
157 What Nature made me, that I must remain.
159 And Savitri heard the voice, the echo heard
160 And turning to her being of pity spoke:
161 "Madonna of suffering, Mother of grief divine,
162 Thou art a portion of my soul put forth
163 To bear the unbearable sorrow of the world.
. . .
167 But thine is the power to solace, not to save.
168 One day I will return, a bringer of strength,
169 And make thee drink from the Eternal's cup;
178 On passed she in her spirit's upward route.
. . .
184 A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
185 Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
186 Her feet upon a couchant lion's back.
212 Aspired the harmony of her puissant voice:
213 "O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
. . .
236 I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,
237 And Lakshmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;
238 I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
239 I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.
. . .
276 I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gates
277 When God comes out to meet the soul of the world."
278 She spoke and from the lower human world
279 An answer, a warped echo met her speech;
. . .
305 The voice rose up and smote some inner sun.
306 "I am the heir of the forces of the earth,
307 Slowly I make good my right to my estate;
. . .
381 When earth is mastered, I shall conquer heaven;
382 The gods shall be my aides or menial folk,
383 No wish I harbour unfulfilled shall die:
384 Omnipotence and omniscience shall be mine."
385 And Savitri heard the voice, the warped echo heard
386 And turning to her being of power she spoke:
387 "Madonna of might, Mother of works and force,
388 Thou art a portion of my soul put forth
. . .
396 Thou hast given men strength, wisdom thou couldst not give.
397 One day I will return, a bringer of light;
398 Then will I give to thee the mirror of God;
399 Thou shalt see self and world as by him they are seen
400 Reflected in the bright pool of thy soul.
407 Ascending still her spirit's upward route
408 She came into a high and happy space,
. . .
419 Here, living centre of that vision of peace,
420 A Woman sat in clear and crystal light:
. . .
425 A low music heard became her floating voice:
426 "O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
427 I have come down to the wounded desolate earth
428 To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest
. . .
491 I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.
495 She spoke and from the ignorant nether plane
496 A cry, a warped echo naked and shuddering came.
. . .
536 "I am the mind of God's great ignorant world
537 Ascending to knowledge by the steps he made;
. . .
575 If God is at work, his secrets I have found.
576 But still the Cause of things is left in doubt,
. . .
580 I know not and perhaps shall never know.
. . .
616 Human I am, human let me remain
617 Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.
625 And Savitri heard the voice, the warped answer heard
626 And turning to her being of light she spoke:
627 "Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace,
628 Thou art a portion of my self put forth
629 To raise the spirit to its forgotten heights
630 And wake the soul by touches of the heavens.
. . .
639 Even if thou rain down intuition's rays,
640 The mind of man will think it earth's own gleam,
. . .
644 His hunger for the eternal thou must nurse
. . .
646 And bring God down into his body and life.
647 One day I will return, His hand in mine,
648 And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.
7.5. The Finding of the Soul
Book Seven. Canto Five
The Finding of the Soul
001 Onward she passed seeking the soul's mystic cave.
002 At first she stepped into a night of God.
. . .
046 The face of Dawn out of mooned twilight grew.
047 Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy
048 Into the worshipping silence of her world;
049 He carried immortal lustre as his robe,
050 Trailed heaven like a purple scarf and wore
051 As his vermilion caste-mark a red sun.
067 An awful dimness wrapped the great rock-doors
068 Carved in the massive stone of Matter's trance.
069 Two golden serpents round the lintel curled,
070 Enveloping it with their pure and dreadful strength,
071 Looked out with wisdom's deep and luminous eyes.
072 An eagle covered it with wide conquering wings:
073 Flames of self-lost immobile reverie,
074 Doves crowded the grey musing cornices
075 Like sculptured postures of white-bosomed peace.
076 Across the threshold's sleep she entered in
077 And found herself amid great figures of gods
078 Conscious in stone and living without breath,
079 Watching with fixed regard the soul of man,
080 Executive figures of the cosmic self,
081 World-symbols of immutable potency.
102 There was no step of breathing men, no sound,
103 Only the living nearness of the soul.
. . .
115 As thus she passed in that mysterious place
116 Through room and room, through door and rock-hewn door,
117 She felt herself made one with all she saw.
118 A sealed identity within her woke;
119 She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
120 These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
. . .
127 The Adorer and Adored self-lost and one.
128 In the last chamber on a golden seat
129 One sat whose shape no vision could define;
130 Only one felt the world's unattainable fount,
131 A Power of which she was a straying Force,
132 An invisible Beauty, goal of the world's desire,
133 A Sun of which all knowledge is a beam,
134 A Greatness without whom no life could be.
135 Thence all departed into silent self,
136 And all became formless and pure and bare.
137 Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock
138 She came out where there shone a deathless sun.
139 A house was there all made of flame and light
140 And crossing a wall of doorless living fire
141 There suddenly she met her secret soul.
142 A being stood immortal in transience,
143 Deathless dallying with momentary things,
. . .
155 She had come into the mortal body's room
. . .
165 But since she knows the toil of mind and life
166 As a mother feels and shares her children's lives,
167 She puts forth a small portion of herself,
168 A being no bigger than the thumb of man
169 Into a hidden region of the heart
170 To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
171 To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds
172 And labour mid the labour of the stars.
196 Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
197 They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
198 The secret deity and its human part,
199 The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
200 Then with a magic transformation's speed
201 They rushed into each other and grew one.
202 Once more she was human upon earthly soil
203 In the muttering night amid the rain-swept woods
204 And the rude cottage where she sat in trance:
. . .
207 But now the half-opened lotus bud of her heart
208 Had bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray;
209 In an image shone revealed her secret soul.
. . .
212 In its deep lotus home her being sat
213 As if on concentration's marble seat,
214 Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds
215 To make this earthly tenement her house.
216 As in a flash from a supernal light,
217 A living image of the original Power,
218 A face, a form came down into her heart
219 And made of it its temple and pure abode.
. . .
223 Out of the Inconscient's soulless mindless night
224 A flaming Serpent rose released from sleep.
225 It rose billowing its coils and stood erect
226 And climbing mightily, stormily on its way
227 It touched her centres with its flaming mouth;
228 As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,
229 They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss.
230 Then at the crown it joined the Eternal's space.
247 All underwent a high celestial change:
248 Breaking the black Inconscient's blind mute wall,
. . .
251 Each part of the being trembling with delight
252 Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness
. . .
255 In the country of the lotus of the head
. . .
257 In the castle of the lotus twixt the brows
. . .
259 In the passage of the lotus of the throat
. . .
278 In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart
. . .
282 In the navel lotus' broad imperial range
. . .
286 In the narrow nether centre's petty parts
. . .
290 In the deep place where once the Serpent slept,
. . .
293 A firm ground was made for Heaven's descending might.
7.6. Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute
Book Seven. Canto Six
Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute
035 Above the cherished head of Satyavan
036 She saw not now Fate's dark and lethal orb;
037 A golden circle round a mystic sun
038 Disclosed to her new-born predicting sight
039 The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life.
065 Once as she sat in deep felicitous muse,
. . .
068 An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.
. . .
074 A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings
075 Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,
076 A denser darkness than the Night could bear,
077 Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.
141 Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,
142 The Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,
143 The voice of Light after the voice of Night:
. . .
146 "O soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;
. . .
159 That all in thee may reach its absolute.
. . .
184 God must be born on earth and be as man
185 That man being human may grow even as God.
. . .
219 Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.
220 Annul thyself that only God may be."
221 Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,
222 And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused
223 Plunging her deep regard into herself
224 In her soul's privacy in the silent Night.
289 Her body's thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs
290 And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown
291 Where Nature's murmurs meet the Ineffable.
405 Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell
406 Like quiet waves upon a silent sea
407 Or ripples passing over a lonely pool
408 When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.
458 Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:
459 Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary
460 A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.
607 Unutterably effaced, no one and null,
608 A vanishing vestige like a violet trace,
609 A faint record merely of a self now past,
610 She was a point in the unknowable.
7.7. The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness
Book Seven. Canto Seven
The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness
059 Yet all was not extinct in this deep loss;
060 The being travelled not towards nothingness.
061 There was some high surpassing Secrecy,
062 And when she sat alone with Satyavan,
063 Her moveless mind with his that searched and strove,
064 In the hush of the profound and intimate night
065 She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth
066 Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart
067 Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought,-
127 But now she sat by sleeping Satyavan,
128 Awake within, and the enormous Night
129 Surrounded her with the Unknowable's vast.
210 Out of the infinitudes all came to her,
211 Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
212 Infinity was her own natural home.
213 Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
214 The distant constellations wheeled round her;
215 Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,
216 The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
217 All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
218 Its movements were large copies of her own.
219 She was the single self of all these selves,
220 She was in them and they were all in her.
8.3. Death in the Forest
Book Eight. Canto Three
Death in the Forest
012 Then silently she rose and, service done,
013 Bowed down to the great goddess simply carved
014 By Satyavan upon a forest stone.
015 What prayer she breathed her soul and Durga knew.
016 Perhaps she felt in the dim forest huge
017 The infinite Mother watching over her child,
018 Perhaps the shrouded Voice spoke some still word.
019 At last she came to the pale mother queen.
020 She spoke but with guarded lips and tranquil face
. . .
027 And forced upon her speech an outward peace.
028 "One year that I have lived with Satyavan
. . .
032 I have not gone into the silences
033 Of this great woodland that enringed my thoughts
. . .
036 Now has a strong desire seized all my heart
037 To go with Satyavan holding his hand
. . .
043 Release me now and let my heart have rest."
044 She answered: "Do as thy wise mind desires,
045 O calm child-sovereign with the eyes that rule.
051 Then the doomed husband and the woman who knew
052 Went with linked hands into that solemn world
053 Where beauty and grandeur and unspoken dream,
054 Where Nature's mystic silence could be felt
055 Communing with the secrecy of God.
083 But Satyavan had paused. He meant to finish
084 His labour here that happy, linked, uncaring
085 They two might wander free in the green deep
086 Primaeval mystery of the forest's heart.
. . .
092 Wordless but near she watched, no turn to lose
093 Of the bright face and body which she loved.
. . .
098 But Satyavan wielded a joyous axe.
099 He sang high snatches of a sage's chant
105 But as he worked, his doom upon him came.
. . .
114 . . . Now the great woodsman
115 Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting
116 His arm he flung away the poignant axe
117 Far from him like an instrument of pain.
118 She came to him in silent anguish and clasped,
119 And he cried to her, "Savitri, a pang
120 Cleaves through my head and breast as if the axe
121 Were piercing it and not the living branch.
127 Then Savitri sat under branches wide,
. . .
131 She guarded him in her bosom and strove to soothe
132 His anguished brow and body with her hands.
. . .
144 He cried out in a clinging last despair,
145 "Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,
146 Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die."
147 And even as her pallid lips pressed his,
148 His failed, losing last sweetness of response;
149 His cheek pressed down her golden arm. She sought
150 His mouth still with her living mouth, as if
151 She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;
152 Then grew aware they were no more alone.
153 Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.
. . .
176 She knew that visible Death was standing there
177 And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.
9.1. Towards the Black Void
Book Nine. Canto One
Towards the Black Void
016 Then suddenly there came on her the change
017 Which in tremendous moments of our lives
018 Can overtake sometimes the human soul
019 And hold it up towards its luminous source.
020 The veil is torn, the thinker is no more:
021 Only the spirit sees and all is known.
022 Then a calm Power seated above our brows
023 Is seen, unshaken by our thoughts and deeds,
024 Its stillness bears the voices of the world:
025 Immobile, it moves Nature, looks on life.
. . .
047 This in a moment's depths was born in her.
054 Like one who looks up to far heights she saw,
055 Ancient and strong as on a windless summit
056 Above her where she had worked in her lone mind
057 Labouring apart in a sole tower of self,
058 The source of all which she had seemed or wrought,
. . .
073 That mightiness assumed a symbol form:
074 Her being's spaces quivered with its touch,
075 It covered her as with immortal wings;
084 All in her mated with that mighty hour,
085 As if the last remnant had been slain by Death
086 Of the humanity that once was hers.
. . .
107 A moment yet she lingered motionless
108 And looked down on the dead man at her feet;
109 Then like a tree recovering from a wind
110 She raised her noble head; fronting her gaze
111 Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand,
112 A limitless denial of all being
113 That wore the terror and wonder of a shape.
130 The two opposed each other with their eyes,
131 Woman and universal god: around her,
132 Piling their void unbearable loneliness
133 Upon her mighty uncompanioned soul,
134 Many inhuman solitudes came close.
179 The dim and awful godhead rose erect
180 From his brief stooping to his touch on earth,
181 And, like a dream that wakes out of a dream,
182 Forsaking the poor mould of that dead clay,
183 Another luminous Satyavan arose,
184 Starting upright from the recumbent earth
185 As if someone over viewless borders stepped
186 Emerging on the edge of unseen worlds.
202 Between two realms he stood, not wavering,
203 But fixed in quiet strong expectancy,
204 Like one who, sightless, listens for a command.
205 So were they immobile on that earthly field,
206 Powers not of earth, though one in human clay.
. . .
212 Luminous he moved away; behind him Death
261 Into a deep and unfamiliar air
262 Enormous, windless, without stir or sound
263 They seemed to enlarge away, drawn by some wide
264 Pale distance, from the warm control of earth
265 And her grown far: now, now they would escape.
266 Then flaming from her body's nest alarmed
267 Her violent spirit soared at Satyavan.
321 Enigma of the Inconscient's sculptural sleep,
322 Symbols of the approach to darkness old
323 And monuments of her titanic reign,
331 Then, to that chill sere heavy line arrived
332 Where his feet touched the shadowy marches' brink,
333 Turning arrested luminous Satyavan
334 Looked back with his wonderful eyes at Savitri.
335 But Death pealed forth his vast abysmal cry:
336 "O mortal, turn back to thy transient kind;
337 Aspire not to accompany Death to his home,
338 As if thy breath could live where Time must die.
369 Still like a statue on its pedestal,
370 Lone in the silence and to vastness bared,
371 Against midnight's dumb abysses piled in front
372 A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.
9.2. The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness
Book Nine. Canto Two
The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness
016 The Woman first affronted the Abyss
017 Daring to journey through the eternal Night.
018 Armoured with light she advanced her foot to plunge
019 Into the dread and hueless vacancy;
132 Once more she heard the treading of a god,
133 And out of the dumb darkness Satyavan,
134 Her husband, grew into a luminous shade.
. . .
138 Death missioned to the night his lethal call.
139 "This is my silent dark immensity,
. . .
142 Entombing the vanity of life's desires.
143 Hast thou beheld thy source, O transient heart,
144 And known from what the dream thou art was made?
222 At last she spoke; her voice was heard by Night:
223 "I bow not to thee, O huge mask of death,
224 Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,
. . .
227 Conscious of immortality I walk.
. . .
247 First I demand whatever Satyavan,
248 My husband, waking in the forest's charm
249 Out of his long pure childhood's lonely dreams,
250 Desired and had not for his beautiful life.
251 Give, if thou must, or, if thou canst, refuse."
252 Death bowed his head in scornful cold assent,
. . .
255 Uplifting his disastrous voice he spoke:
. . .
257 I yield to his blind father's longing heart
258 Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost
259 And royal trappings for his peaceful age,
260 The pallid pomps of man's declining days,
261 The silvered decadent glories of life's fall.
275 But Savitri answered the disdainful Shade:
276 "World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.
. . .
278 I am immortal in my mortality.
279 I tremble not before the immobile gaze
280 Of the unchanging marble hierarchies
281 That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.
282 My soul can meet them with its living fire.
. . .
296 Wherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue."
308 Against the Woman's boundless heart arose
309 The almighty cry of universal Death.
310 "Hast thou god-wings or feet that tread my stars,
311 Frail creature with the courage that aspires,
312 Forgetting thy bounds of thought, thy mortal role?
. . .
340 I will take from thee the black eternal grip:
341 Clasping in thy heart thy fate's exiguous dole
342 Depart in peace, if peace for man is just."
343 But Savitri answered meeting scorn with scorn,
344 The mortal woman to the dreadful Lord:
345 "Who is this God imagined by thy night,
346 Contemptuously creating worlds disdained,
347 Who made for vanity the brilliant stars?
348 Not he who has reared his temple in my thoughts
349 And made his sacred floor my human heart.
350 My God is will and triumphs in his paths,
351 My God is love and sweetly suffers all.
. . .
360 Love's golden wings have power to fan thy void:
361 The eyes of love gaze starlike through death's night,
362 The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds.
371 Once more a Thought, a Word in the void arose
372 And Death made answer to the human soul:
. . .
384 Wilt thou claim immortality, O heart,
385 Crying against the eternal witnesses
386 That thou and he are endless powers and last?
387 Death only lasts and the inconscient Void.
. . .
394 All from my depths are born, they live by death;
395 All to my depths return and are no more.
. . .
403 I, Death, am the one refuge of thy soul.
439 But Savitri replied to the dread Voice:
440 "O Death, who reasonest, I reason not,
441 Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build
442 Or builds in vain because she doubts her work.
443 I am, I love, I see, I act, I will."
444 Death answered her, one deep surrounding cry:
445 "Know also. Knowing, thou shalt cease to love
. . .
449 But Savitri replied for man to Death:
450 "When I have loved for ever, I shall know.
451 Love in me knows the truth all changings mask.
466 Like one disdaining violent helpless words
467 From victim lips Death answered not again.
468 He stood in silence and in darkness wrapped,
. . .
471 Half-seen in clouds appeared a sombre face;
472 Night's dusk tiara was his matted hair,
473 The ashes of the pyre his forehead's sign.
477 Around her rolled the shuddering waste of gloom,
478 Its swallowing emptiness and joyless death
479 Resentful of her thought and life and love.
480 Through the long fading night by her compelled,
481 Gliding half-seen on their unearthly path,
482 Phantasmal in the dimness moved the three.
10.1. The Dream Twilight of the Ideal
Book Ten. Canto One
The Dream Twilight of the Ideal
071 Night is not our beginning nor our end;
072 She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid
073 Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain.
086 Assailed in the sovereign emptiness of its reign
087 The intolerant Darkness paled and drew apart
088 Till only a few black remnants stained that Ray.
089 But on a failing edge of dumb lost space
090 Still a great dragon body sullenly loomed;
091 Adversary of the slow struggling Dawn
092 Defending its ground of tortured mystery,
093 It trailed its coils through the dead martyred air
094 And curving fled down a grey slope of Time.
095 There is a morning twilight of the gods;
096 Miraculous from sleep their forms arise
097 And God's long nights are justified by dawn.
. . .
109 Into a happy misty twilit world
110 Where all ran after light and joy and love
111 She slipped; there far-off raptures drew more close
252 Above, her spirit in its mighty trance
253 Saw all, but lived for its transcendent task,
254 Immutable like a fixed eternal star
10.2. The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal
Book Ten. Canto Two
The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal
001 Then pealed the calm inexorable voice:
. . .
011 This is the world from which thy yearnings came.
10.3. The Debate of Love and Death
Book Ten. Canto Three
The Debate of Love and Death
004 But Savitri answered to almighty Death:
. . .
432 "O Death, I have triumphed over thee within;
. . .
443 O Death, not for my heart's sweet poignancy
444 Nor for my happy body's bliss alone
445 I have claimed from thee the living Satyavan,
446 But for his work and mine, our sacred charge.
447 Our lives are God's messengers beneath the stars;
448 To dwell under death's shadow they have come
449 Tempting God's light to earth for the ignorant race,
462 But to the woman Death the god replied,
. . .
480 O human face, put off mind-painted masks:
481 The animal be, the worm that Nature meant;
482 Accept thy futile birth, thy narrow life.
. . .
523 But Savitri replied to mighty Death:
524 "My heart is wiser than the Reason's thoughts,
525 My heart is stronger than thy bonds, O Death.
526 It sees and feels the one Heart beat in all,
527 It feels the high Transcendent's sunlike hands,
567 Death bowed his sovereign head in cold assent:
568 "I give to thee, saved from death and poignant fate
569 Whatever once the living Satyavan
570 Desired in his heart for Savitri.
. . .
582 Return, O child, to thy forsaken earth."
583 But Savitri replied, "Thy gifts resist.
584 Earth cannot flower if lonely I return."
585 Then Death sent forth once more his angry cry,
. . .
587 "What knowst thou of earth's rich and changing life
588 Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease?
. . .
597 But Savitri replied to the vague god,
598 "Give me back Satyavan, my only lord.
599 Thy thoughts are vacant to my soul that feels
600 The deep eternal truth in transient things."
. . .
645 Thus with armed speech the great opponents strove.
674 The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
675 And she behind was leader of their march
676 And they in front were followers of her will.
. . .
685 Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,
686 In the dark front of Death, a failing star.
687 Above was the unseen balance of his fate.
10.4. The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real
Book Ten. Canto Four
The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real
083 Once more arose the great destroying Voice:
. . .
087 "Behold the figures of this symbol realm,
088 Its solid outlines of creative dream
089 Inspiring the great concrete tasks of earth.
. . .
096 Where Nature changes not, man cannot change:
. . .
121 Hope not to call God down into his life.
122 How shalt thou bring the Everlasting here?
123 There is no house for him in hurrying Time.
234 But Savitri answered to the sophist God:
. . .
290 If the chamber's door is even a little ajar,
291 What then can hinder God from stealing in
292 Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping soul?
293 Already God is near, the Truth is close:
. . .
305 A lonely freedom cannot satisfy
306 A heart that has grown one with every heart:
307 I am a deputy of the aspiring world,
308 My spirit's liberty I ask for all."
309 Then rang again a deeper cry of Death.
. . .
378 Mighty art thou with the dread goddess filled,
379 To whom thou criedst at dawn in the dim woods.
380 Use not thy strength like the wild Titan souls!
381 Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,
382 Respect the calm of great established things."
383 But Savitri replied to the huge god:
384 "What is the calm thou vauntst, O Law, O Death?
. . .
401 I trample on thy law with living feet;
402 For to arise in freedom I was born.
408 . . . Death replied to her,
409 "Why should the noble and immortal will
410 Stoop to the petty works of transient earth,
411 Freedom forgotten and the Eternal's path?
. . .
424 She answered, "Straight I trample on the road
425 The strong hand hewed for me which planned our paths.
. . .
446 Freedom is this with ever seated soul,
447 Large in life's limits, strong in Matter's knots,
448 Building great stuff of action from the worlds
449 To make fine wisdom from coarse, scattered strands
450 And love and beauty out of war and night,
451 The wager wonderful, the game divine.
461 Immutable, Death's denial met her cry:
. . .
496 All things hang here between God's yes and no,
497 Two Powers real but to each other untrue,
498 Two consort stars in the mooned night of mind
499 That towards two opposite horizons gaze,
500 The white head and black tail of the mystic drake,
501 The swift and the lame foot, wing strong, wing broken
502 Sustaining the body of the uncertain world,
503 A great surreal dragon in the skies.
539 The Woman answered to the mighty Shade,
540 And as she spoke, mortality disappeared;
541 Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes,
542 Light came, a dream of heaven, into her face.
666 On summit Mind are radiant altitudes
667 Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,
668 Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,
. . .
671 A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;
672 Its smallest parts are here philosophies
673 Challenging with their detailed immensity,
675 But higher still can climb the ascending light;
676 There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,
677 Oceans of an immortal luminousness,
678 Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,
684 A highest flight climbs to a deepest view:
685 In a wide opening of its native sky
686 Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack
687 Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,
. . .
695 Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes;
696 The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,
697 Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy
698 And tears away the veil from God and life.
11.1. The Eternal Day: The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation
Book Eleven. Canto One
The Eternal Day:
The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation
898 "Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again;
899 For now from my highest being looks at thee
900 The nameless formless peace where all things rest.
901 In a happy vast sublime cessation know,-
902 An immense extinction in eternity,
903 A point that disappears in the infinite,-
904 Felicity of the extinguished flame,
905 Last sinking of a wave in a boundless sea,
906 End of the trouble of thy wandering thoughts,
907 Close of the journeying of thy pilgrim soul.
908 Accept, O music, weariness of thy notes,
909 O stream, wide breaking of thy channel banks."
910 The moments fell into eternity.
911 But someone yearned within a bosom unknown
912 And silently the woman's heart replied:
913 "Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep
914 Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time
915 For the magnificent soul of man on earth.
916 Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy."
917 Limitless like ocean round a lonely isle
918 A second time the eternal cry arose:
919 "Wide open are the ineffable gates in front.
920 My spirit leans down to break the knot of earth,
921 Amorous of oneness without thought or sign
922 To cast down wall and fence, to strip heaven bare,
923 See with the large eye of infinity,
924 Unweave the stars and into silence pass."
925 In an immense and world-destroying pause
926 She heard a million creatures cry to her.
927 Through the tremendous stillness of her thoughts
928 Immeasurably the woman's nature spoke:
929 "Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,
930 My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls."
931 Mightily retreating like a sea in ebb
932 A third time swelled the great admonishing call:
933 "I spread abroad the refuge of my wings.
934 Out of its incommunicable deeps
935 My power looks forth of mightiest splendour, stilled
936 Into its majesty of sleep, withdrawn
937 Above the dreadful whirlings of the world."
938 A sob of things was answer to the voice,
939 And passionately the woman's heart replied:
940 "Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,
941 To take all things and creatures in their grief
942 And gather them into a mother's arms."
943 Solemn and distant like a seraph's lyre
944 A last great time the warning sound was heard:
945 "I open the wide eye of solitude
946 To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss,
947 Where in a pure and exquisite hush it lies
948 Motionless in its slumber of ecstasy,
949 Resting from the sweet madness of the dance
950 Out of whose beat the throb of hearts was born."
951 Breaking the Silence with appeal and cry
952 A hymn of adoration tireless climbed,
953 A music beat of winged uniting souls,
954 Then all the woman yearningly replied:
955 "Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,
956 Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,
957 Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,
958 Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men."
959 Then after silence a still blissful cry
960 Began, such as arose from the Infinite
961 When the first whisperings of a strange delight
962 Imagined in its deep the joy to seek,
963 The passion to discover and to touch,
964 The enamoured laugh which rhymed the chanting worlds:
965 "O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
966 Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
967 My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:
968 All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.
969 All shall be written out in destiny's book
970 By my trustee of thought and plan and act,
971 The executor of my will, eternal Time.
972 But since thou hast refused my maimless Calm
973 And turned from my termless peace in which is expunged
974 The visage of Space and the shape of Time is lost,
975 And from happy extinction of thy separate self
976 In my uncompanioned lone eternity,-
977 For not for thee the nameless worldless Nought,
978 Annihilation of thy living soul
979 And the end of thought and hope and life and love
980 In the blank measureless Unknowable,-
981 I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,
982 I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,
983 I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.
984 Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,
985 Because thou hast chosen to share earth's struggle and fate
986 And leaned in pity over earth-bound men
987 And turned aside to help and yearned to save,
988 I bind by thy heart's passion thy heart to mine
989 And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.
990 Now will I do in thee my marvellous works.
991 I will fasten thy nature with my cords of strength,
992 Subdue to my delight thy spirit's limbs
993 And make thee a vivid knot of all my bliss
994 And build in thee my proud and crystal home.
995 Thy days shall be my shafts of power and light,
996 Thy nights my starry mysteries of joy
997 And all my clouds lie tangled in thy hair
998 And all my springtides marry in thy mouth.
999 O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
1000 And bring down God into the lives of men;
1001 Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
1002 My garden of life to plant a seed divine.
1003 When all thy work in human time is done
1004 The mind of earth shall be a home of light,
1005 The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
1006 The body of earth a tabernacle of God.
1007 Awakened from the mortal's ignorance
1008 Men shall be lit with the Eternal's ray
1009 And the glory of my sun-lift in their thoughts
1010 And feel in their hearts the sweetness of my love
1011 And in their acts my Power's miraculous drive.
1012 My will shall be the meaning of their days;
1013 Living for me, by me, in me they shall live.
1014 In the heart of my creation's mystery
1015 I will enact the drama of thy soul,
1016 Inscribe the long romance of Thee and Me.
1017 I will pursue thee across the centuries;
1018 Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,
1019 Naked of ignorance' protecting veil
1020 And without covert from my radiant gods.
1021 No shape shall screen thee from my divine desire,
1022 Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.
1023 In the nudity of thy discovered self,
1024 In a bare identity with all that is,
1025 Disrobed of thy covering of humanity,
1026 Divested of the dense veil of human thought,
1027 Made one with every mind and body and heart,
1028 Made one with all Nature and with Self and God,
1029 Summing in thy single soul my mystic world
1030 I will possess in thee my universe,
1031 The universe find all I am in thee.
1032 Thou shalt bear all things that all things may change,
1033 Thou shalt fill all with my splendour and my bliss,
1034 Thou shalt meet all with thy transmuting soul.
1035 Assailed by my infinitudes above,
1036 And quivering in immensities below,
1037 Pursued by me through my mind's wall-less vast,
1038 Oceanic with the surges of my life,
1039 A swimmer lost between two leaping seas
1040 By my outer pains and inner sweetnesses
1041 Finding my joy in my opposite mysteries
1042 Thou shalt respond to me from every nerve.
1043 A vision shall compel thy coursing breath,
1044 Thy heart shall drive thee on the wheel of works,
1045 Thy mind shall urge thee through the flames of thought,
1046 To meet me in the abyss and on the heights,
1047 To feel me in the tempest and the calm,
1048 And love me in the noble and the vile,
1049 In beautiful things and terrible desire.
1050 The pains of hell shall be to thee my kiss,
1051 The flowers of heaven persuade thee with my touch.
1052 My fiercest masks shall my attractions bring.
1053 Music shall find thee in the voice of swords,
1054 Beauty pursue thee through the core of flame.
1055 Thou shalt know me in the rolling of the spheres
1056 And cross me in the atoms of the whirl.
1057 The wheeling forces of my universe
1058 Shall cry to thee the summons of my name.
1059 Delight shall drop down from my nectarous moon,
1060 My fragrance seize thee in the jasmine's snare,
1061 My eye shall look upon thee from the sun.
1062 Mirror of Nature's secret spirit made,
1063 Thou shalt reflect my hidden heart of joy,
1064 Thou shalt drink down my sweetness unalloyed
1065 In my pure lotus-cup of starry brim.
1066 My dreadful hands laid on thy bosom shall force
1067 Thy being bathed in fiercest longing's streams.
1068 Thou shalt discover the one and quivering note,
1069 And cry, the harp of all my melodies,
1070 And roll, my foaming wave in seas of love.
1071 Even my disasters' clutch shall be to thee
1072 The ordeal of my rapture's contrary shape:
1073 In pain's self shall smile on thee my secret face:
1074 Thou shalt bear my ruthless beauty unabridged
1075 Amid the world's intolerable wrongs,
1076 Trampled by the violent misdeeds of Time
1077 Cry out to the ecstasy of my rapture's touch.
1078 All beings shall be to thy life my emissaries;
1079 Drawn to me on the bosom of thy friend,
1080 Compelled to meet me in thy enemy's eyes,
1081 My creatures shall demand me from thy heart.
1082 Thou shalt not shrink from any brother soul.
1083 Thou shalt be attracted helplessly to all.
1084 Men seeing thee shall feel my hands of joy,
1085 In sorrow's pangs feel steps of the world's delight,
1086 Their life experience its tumultuous shock
1087 In the mutual craving of two opposites.
1088 Hearts touched by thy love shall answer to my call,
1089 Discover the ancient music of the spheres
1090 In the revealing accents of thy voice
1091 And nearer draw to me because thou art:
1092 Enamoured of thy spirit's loveliness
1093 They shall embrace my body in thy soul,
1094 Hear in thy life the beauty of my laugh,
1095 Know the thrilled bliss with which I made the worlds.
1096 All that thou hast, shall be for others' bliss,
1097 All that thou art, shall to my hands belong.
1098 I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
1099 I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
1100 I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
1101 I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.
1102 And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy,
1103 And when thou liv'st one spirit with all things,
1104 Then will I spare thee not my living fires,
1105 But make thee a channel for my timeless force.
1106 My hidden presence led thee unknowing on
1107 From thy beginning in earth's voiceless bosom
1108 Through life and pain and time and will and death,
1109 Through outer shocks and inner silences
1110 Along the mystic roads of Space and Time
1111 To the experience which all Nature hides.
1112 Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows:
1113 This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.
1114 For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
1115 O lasso of my rapture's widening noose,
1116 Become my cord of universal love.
1117 The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight
1118 Of creation's oneness sweet and fathomless,
1119 Compelled to embrace my myriad unities
1120 And all my endless forms and divine souls.
1121 O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;
1122 O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
1123. Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.