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Savitri
by Sri Aurobindo
Part Two
Book Four - The Book of Birth and Quest
Canto One
The Birth and Childhood of the Flame
A Maenad of the cycles of desire
Around a
Light she must not dare to touch, Hastening towards a far-off unknown
goal Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun. A mind but half-awake
in the swing of the void On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out
life And bore this finite world of thought and deed Across the immobile
trance of the Infinite. A vast immutable silence with her ran: Prisoner
of speed upon a jewelled wheel, She communed with the mystic heart in
Space. Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars She moved towards some
undisclosed event And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time. In
ceaseless motion round the purple rim Day after day sped by like coloured
spokes, And through a glamour of shifting hues of air The seasons drew in
linked significant dance The symbol pageant of the changing year. Across
the burning languor of the soil Paced Summer with his pomp of violent
noons And stamped his tyranny of torrid light And the blue seal of a
great burnished sky. Next through its fiery swoon or clotted
knot Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat, Startled with lightnings
air's unquiet drowse, Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid
soil, Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark The
star-defended doors of heaven's dim sleep, Or from the gold eye of her
paramour Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth's brown face. Armies
of revolution crossed the time-field, The clouds' unending march besieged
the world, Tempests' pronunciamentos claimed the sky And thunder drums
announced the embattled gods. A traveller from unquiet neighbouring
seas, The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth's hours: Thick
now the emissary javelins: Enormous lightnings split the horizon's
rim And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps, Married
heaven's edges steep and bare and blind: A surge and hiss and onset of huge
rain, The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged
storm-charge, Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet Hurrying swept
through the prone afflicted plains: Heaven's waters trailed and dribbled
through the drowned land. Then all was a swift stride, a sibilant
race, Or all was tempest's shout and water's fall. A dimness sagged on
the grey floor of day, Its dingy sprawling length joined morn to
eve, Wallowing in sludge and shower it reached black dark. Day a half
darkness wore as its dull dress. Light looked into dawn's tarnished glass
and met Its own face there, twin to a half-lit night's: Downpour and drip
and seeping mist swayed all And turned dry soil to bog and reeking
mud: Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block. None saw through dank
drenched weeks the dungeon sun. Even when no turmoil vexed air's sombre
rest, Or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds As a sad smile
gleams veiled by returning tears, All promised brightness failed at once
denied Or, soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope. Then a last
massive deluge thrashed dead mire And a subsiding mutter left all
still, Or only the muddy creep of sinking floods Or only a whisper and
green toss of trees. Earth's mood now changed; she lay in lulled
repose, The hours went by with slow contented tread: A wide and tranquil
air remembered peace, Earth was the comrade of a happy sun. A calmness
neared as of the approach of God, A light of musing trance lit soil and
sky And an identity and ecstasy Filled meditation's solitary heart. A
dream loitered in the dumb mind of Space, Time opened its chambers of
felicity, An exaltation entered and a hope: An inmost self looked up to a
heavenlier height, An inmost thought kindled a hidden flame And the inner
sight adored an unseen sun. Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining
tread And scanning one by one the pregnant hours Watched for a flame that
lurked in luminous depths, The vigil of some mighty birth to come. Autumn
led in the glory of her moons And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus
pools And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands On Nature's
bosom still in a half sleep And deepened with hues of lax and mellow
ease The tranquil beauty of the waning year. Then Spring, an ardent
lover, leaped through leaves And caught the earth-bride in his eager
clasp; His advent was a fire of irised hues, His arms were a circle of
the arrival of joy. His voice was a call to the Transcendent's
sphere Whose secret touch upon our mortal lives Keeps ever new the thrill
that made the world, Remoulds an ancient sweetness to new shapes And
guards intact unchanged by death and Time The answer of our hearts to
Nature's charm And keeps for ever new, yet still the same, The throb that
ever wakes to the old delight And beauty and rapture and the joy to
live. His coming brought the magic and the spell; At his touch life's
tired heart grew glad and young; He made joy a willing prisoner in her
breast. His grasp was a young god's upon earth's limbs: Changed by the
passion of his divine outbreak He made her body beautiful with his
kiss. Impatient for felicity he came, High-fluting with the coïl's
happy voice, His peacock turban trailing on the trees; His breath was a
warm summons to delight, The dense voluptuous azure was his gaze. A soft
celestial urge surprised the blood Rich with the instinct of God's sensuous
joys; Revealed in beauty, a cadence was abroad Insistent on the
rapture-thrill in life: Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours. A
godlike packed intensity of sense Made it a passionate pleasure even to
breathe; All sights and voices wove a single charm. The life of the
enchanted globe became A storm of sweetness and of light and song, A
revel of colour and of ecstasy, A hymn of rays, a litany of cries: A
strain of choral priestly music sang And, swung on the swaying censer of the
trees, A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours. Asocas burned in crimson
spots of flame, Pure like the breath of an unstained desire White
jasmines haunted the enamoured air, Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid
voice Of the love-maddened coïl, and the brown bee Muttered in
fragrance mid the honey-buds. The sunlight was a great god's golden
smile. All Nature was at beauty's festival.
In this high signal
moment of the gods Answering earth's yearning and her cry for bliss, A
greatness from our other countries came. A silence in the noise of earthly
things Immutably revealed the secret Word, A mightier influx filled the
oblivious clay: A lamp was lit, a sacred image made. A mediating ray had
touched the earth Bridging the gulf between man's mind and God's; Its
brightness linked our transience to the Unknown. A spirit of its celestial
source aware Translating heaven into a human shape Descended into earth's
imperfect mould And wept not fallen to mortality, But looked on all with
large and tranquil eyes. One had returned from the transcendent
planes And bore anew the load of mortal breath, Who had striven of old
with our darkness and our pain; She took again her divine unfinished
task: Survivor of death and the aeonic years, Once more with her
fathomless heart she fronted Time. Again there was renewed, again
revealed The ancient closeness by earth-vision veiled, The secret contact
broken off in Time, A consanguinity of earth and heaven, Between the
human portion toiling here And an as yet unborn and limitless
Force. Again the mystic deep attempt began, The daring wager of the
cosmic game. For since upon this blind and whirling globe Earth-plasm
first quivered with the illumining mind And life invaded the material
sheath Afflicting Inconscience with the need to feel, Since in Infinity's
silence woke a word, A Mother-wisdom works in Nature's breast To pour
delight on the heart of toil and want And press perfection on life's
stumbling powers, Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss And make
dumb Matter conscious of its God. Although our fallen minds forget to
climb, Although our human stuff resists or breaks, She keeps her will
that hopes to divinise clay; Failure cannot repress, defeat
o'erthrow; Time cannot weary her nor the Void subdue, The ages have not
made her passion less; No victory she admits of Death or Fate. Always she
drives the soul to new attempt; Always her magical infinitude Forces to
aspire the inert brute elements; As one who has all infinity to
waste, She scatters the seed of the Eternal's strength On a half-animate
and crumbling mould, Plants heaven's delight in the heart's passionate
mire, Pours godhead's seekings into a bare beast frame, Hides immortality
in a mask of death. Once more that Will put on an earthly shape. A Mind
empowered from Truth's immutable seat Was framed for vision and interpreting
act And instruments were sovereignly designed To express divinity in
terrestrial signs. Outlined by the pressure of this new descent A
lovelier body formed than earth had known. As yet a prophecy only and a
hint, The glowing arc of a charmed unseen whole, It came into the sky of
mortal life Bright like the crescent horn of a gold moon Returning in a
faint illumined eve. At first glimmering like an unshaped idea Passive
she lay sheltered in wordless sleep, Involved and drowned in Matter's giant
trance, An infant heart of the deep-caved world-plan In cradle of divine
inconscience rocked By the universal ecstasy of the suns. Some missioned
Power in the half-wakened frame Nursed a transcendent birth's dumb glorious
seed For which this vivid tenement was made. But soon the link of soul
with form grew sure; Flooded was the dim cave with slow conscient
light, The seed grew into a delicate marvellous bud, The bud disclosed a
great and heavenly bloom. At once she seemed to found a mightier
race. Arrived upon the strange and dubious globe The child remembering
inly a far home Lived guarded in her spirit's luminous cell, Alone mid
men in her diviner kind. Even in her childish movements could be felt The
nearness of a light still kept from earth, Feelings that only eternity could
share, Thoughts natural and native to the gods. As needing nothing but
its own rapt flight Her nature dwelt in a strong separate air Like a
strange bird with large rich-coloured breast That sojourns on a secret
fruited bough, Lost in the emerald glory of the woods Or flies above
divine unreachable tops. Harmoniously she impressed the earth with
heaven. Aligned to a swift rhythm of sheer delight And singing to
themselves her days went by; Each minute was a throb of beauty's
heart; The hours were tuned to a sweet-toned content Which asked for
nothing, but took all life gave Sovereignly as her nature's inborn
right. Near was her spirit to its parent Sun, The Breath within to the
eternal joy. The first fair life that breaks from Nature's swoon, Mounts
in a line of rapture to the skies; Absorbed in its own happy urge it
lives, Sufficient to itself, yet turned to all: It has no seen communion
with its world, No open converse with surrounding things. There is a
oneness native and occult That needs no instruments and erects no
form; In unison it grows with all that is. All contacts it assumes into
its trance, Laugh-tossed consents to the wind's kiss and
takes Transmutingly the shocks of sun and breeze: A blissful yearning
riots in its leaves, A magic passion trembles in its blooms, Its boughs
aspire in hushed felicity. An occult godhead of this beauty is cause, The
spirit and intimate guest of all this charm, This sweetness's priestess and
this reverie's muse. Invisibly protected from our sense The Dryad lives
drenched in a deeper ray And feels another air of storms and calms And
quivers inwardly with mystic rain. This at a heavenlier height was shown in
her. Even when she bent to meet earth's intimacies Her spirit kept the
stature of the gods; It stooped but was not lost in Matter's reign. A
world translated was her gleaming mind, And marvel-mooned bright crowding
fantasies Fed with spiritual sustenance of dreams The ideal goddess in
her house of gold. Aware of forms to which our eyes are closed, Conscious
of nearnesses we cannot feel, The Power within her shaped her moulding
sense In deeper figures than our surface types. An invisible sunlight ran
within her veins And flooded her brain with heavenly brilliances That
woke a wider sight than earth could know. Outlined in the sincerity of that
ray Her springing childlike thoughts were richly turned Into luminous
patterns of her soul's deep truth, And from her eyes she cast another
look On all around her than man's ignorant view. All objects were to her
shapes of living selves And she perceived a message from her kin In each
awakening touch of outward things. Each was a symbol power, a vivid
flash In the circuit of infinities half-known; Nothing was alien or
inanimate, Nothing without its meaning or its call. For with a greater
Nature she was one. As from the soil sprang glory of branch and
flower, As from the animal's life rose thinking man, A new epiphany
appeared in her. A mind of light, a life of rhythmic force, A body
instinct with hidden divinity Prepared an image of the coming god; And
when the slow rhyme of the expanding years And the rich murmurous swarm-work
of the days Had honey-packed her sense and filled her
limbs, Accomplishing the moon-orb of her grace, Self-guarded in the
silence of her strength Her solitary greatness was not less. Nearer the
godhead to the surface pressed, A sun replacing childhood's
nebula Sovereign in a blue and lonely sky. Upward it rose to grasp the
human scene: The strong Inhabitant turned to watch her field. A lovelier
light assumed her spirit brow And sweet and solemn grew her musing
gaze; Celestial-human deep warm slumbrous fires Woke in the long fringed
glory of her eyes Like altar-burnings in a mysteried shrine. Out of those
crystal windows gleamed a will That brought a large significance to
life. Holding her forehead's candid stainless space Behind the student
arch a noble power Of wisdom looked from light on transient things. A
scout of victory in a vigil tower, Her aspiration called high destiny
down; A silent warrior paced in her city of strength Inviolate, guarding
Truth's diamond throne. A nectarous haloed moon her passionate
heart Loved all and spoke no word and made no sign, But kept her bosom's
rapturous secrecy A blissful ardent moved and voiceless world. Proud,
swift and joyful ran the wave of life Within her like a stream in
Paradise. Many high gods dwelt in one beautiful home; Yet was her
nature's orb a perfect whole, Harmonious like a chant with many
tones, Immense and various like a universe. The body that held this
greatness seemed almost An image made of heaven's transparent light. Its
charm recalled things seen in vision's hours, A golden bridge spanning a
faery flood, A moon-touched palm-tree single by a lake Companion of the
wide and glimmering peace, A murmur as of leaves in Paradise Moving when
feet of the Immortals pass, A fiery halo over sleeping hills, A strange
and starry head alone in Night.
in "Savitri" - SABCL Volume 29
- (pages 349-358)
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
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