|
Savitri
by Sri Aurobindo
Part Two
Book Four - The Book of Birth and Quest
Canto Two
The Growth of the Flame
A land of mountains and wide sun-beat plains And giant
rivers pacing to vast seas, A field of creation and spiritual
hush, Silence swallowing life's acts into the deeps, Of thought's
transcendent climb and heavenward leap, A brooding world of reverie and
trance, Filled with the mightiest works of God and man, Where Nature
seemed a dream of the Divine And beauty and grace and grandeur had their
home, Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame. Over her watched
millennial influences And the deep godheads of a grandiose past Looked on
her and saw the future's godheads come As if this magnet drew their powers
unseen. Earth's brooding wisdom spoke to her still breast; Mounting from
mind's last peaks to mate with gods, Making earth's brilliant thoughts a
springing-board To dive into the cosmic vastnesses, The knowledge of the
thinker and the seer Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable, Opened
the enormous doors of the unknown, Rent man's horizons into infinity. A
shoreless sweep was lent to the mortal's acts, And art and beauty sprang
from the human depths; Nature and soul vied in nobility. Ethics the human
keyed to imitate heaven; The harmony of a rich culture's tones Refined
the sense and magnified its reach To hear the unheard and glimpse the
invisible And taught the soul to soar beyond things known, Inspiring life
to greaten and break its bounds, Aspiring to the Immortals' unseen
world. Leaving earth's safety daring wings of Mind Bore her above the
trodden fields of thought Crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond To live
on eagle heights near to the Sun. There Wisdom sits on her eternal
throne. All her life's turns led her to symbol doors Admitting to secret
Powers that were her kin; Adept of truth, initiate of bliss, A mystic
acolyte trained in Nature's school, Aware of the marvel of created
things She laid the secrecies of her heart's deep muse Upon the altar of
the Wonderful; Her hours were a ritual in a timeless fane; Her acts
became gestures of sacrifice. Invested with a rhythm of higher
spheres The word was used as a hieratic means For the release of the
imprisoned spirit Into communion with its comrade gods. Or it helped to
beat out new expressive forms Of that which labours in the heart of
life, Some immemorial Soul in men and things, Seeker of the unknown and
the unborn Carrying a light from the Ineffable To rend the veil of the
last mysteries. Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven Or on
foundations broad as cosmic Space Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman
heights. Overpassing lines that please the outward eyes But hide the
sight of that which lives within Sculpture and painting concentrated
sense Upon an inner vision's motionless verge, Revealed a figure of the
invisible, Unveiled all Nature's meaning in a form, Or caught into a body
the Divine. The architecture of the Infinite Discovered here its
inward-musing shapes Captured into wide breadths of soaring stone: Music
brought down celestial yearnings, song Held the merged heart absorbed in
rapturous depths, Linking the human with the cosmic cry; The
world-interpreting movements of the dance Moulded idea and mood to a
rhythmic sway And posture; crafts minute in subtle lines Eternised a
swift moment's memory Or showed in a carving's sweep, a cup's design The
underlying patterns of the unseen: Poems in largeness cast like moving
worlds And metres surging with the ocean's voice Translated by grandeurs
locked in Nature's heart But thrown now into a crowded glory of
speech The beauty and sublimity of her forms, The passion of her moments
and her moods Lifting the human word nearer to the god's. Man's eyes
could look into the inner realms; His scrutiny discovered number's
law And organised the motions of the stars, Mapped out the visible
fashioning of the world, Questioned the process of his thoughts or made A
theorised diagram of mind and life. These things she took in as her nature's
food, But these alone could fill not her wide Self: A human seeking
limited by its gains, To her they seemed the great and early
steps Hazardous of a young discovering spirit Which saw not yet by its
own native light; It tapped the universe with testing knocks Or stretched
to find truth mind's divining rod; There was a growing out to numberless
sides, But not the widest seeing of the soul, Not yet the vast direct
immediate touch, Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods. A boundless
knowledge greater than man's thought, A happiness too high for heart and
sense Locked in the world and yearning for release She felt in her;
waiting as yet for form, It asked for objects around which to grow And
natures strong to bear without recoil The splendour of her native
royalty, Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss, Her might to
possess and her vast power to love: Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer
heaven, The soul saw beyond heaven's limiting boundaries, Met a great
light from the Unknowable And dreamed of a transcendent action's
sphere. Aware of the universal Self in all She turned to living hearts
and human forms, Her soul's reflections, complements, counterparts, The
close outlying portions of her being Divided from her by walls of body and
mind Yet to her spirit bound by ties divine. Overcoming invisible hedge
and masked defence And the loneliness that separates soul from soul, She
wished to make all one immense embrace That she might house in it all living
things Raised into a splendid point of seeing light Out of division's
dense inconscient cleft, And make them one with God and world and
her. Only a few responded to her call: Still fewer felt the screened
divinity And strove to mate its godhead with their own, Approaching with
some kinship to her heights. Uplifted towards luminous secrecies Or
conscious of some splendour hidden above They leaped to find her in a
moment's flash, Glimpsing a light in a celestial vast, But could not keep
the vision and the power And fell back to life's dull ordinary tone. A
mind daring heavenly experiment, Growing towards some largeness they felt
near, Testing the unknown's bound with eager touch They still were
prisoned by their human grain: They could not keep up with her tireless
step; Too small and eager for her large-paced will, Too narrow to look
with the unborn Infinite's gaze Their nature weary grew of things too
great. For even the close partners of her thoughts Who could have walked
the nearest to her ray, Worshipped the power and light they felt in
her But could not match the measure of her soul. A friend and yet too
great wholly to know, She walked in their front towards a greater
light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls, One close to
their bosoms, yet divine and far. Admiring and amazed they saw her
stride Attempting with a godlike rush and leap Heights for their human
stature too remote Or with a slow great many-sided toil Pushing towards
aims they hardly could conceive; Yet forced to be the satellites of her
sun They moved unable to forego her light, Desiring they clutched at her
with outstretched hands Or followed stumbling in the paths she made. Or
longing with their self of life and flesh They clung to her for heart's
nourishment and support: The rest they could not see in visible
light; Vaguely they bore her inner mightiness. Or bound by the senses and
the longing heart, Adoring with a turbid human love, They could not grasp
the mighty spirit she was Or change by closeness to be even as she. Some
felt her with their souls and thrilled with her, A greatness felt near yet
beyond mind's grasp; To see her was a summons to adore, To be near her
drew a high communion's force. So men worship a god too great to
know, Too high, too vast to wear a limiting shape; They feel a Presence
and obey a might, Adore a love whose rapture invades their breasts; To a
divine ardour quickening the heart-beats, A law they follow greatening heart
and life. Opened to the breath is a new diviner air, Opened to man is a
freer, happier world: He sees high steps climbing to Self and Light. Her
divine parts the soul's allegiance called: It saw, it felt, it knew the
deity. Her will was puissant on their nature's acts, Her heart's
inexhaustible sweetness lured their hearts, A being they loved whose bounds
exceeded theirs; Her measure they could not reach but bore her
touch, Answering with the flower's answer to the sun They gave themselves
to her and asked no more. One greater than themselves, too wide for their
ken, Their minds could not understand nor wholly know, Their lives
replied to hers, moved at her words: They felt a godhead and obeyed a
call, Answered to her lead and did her work in the world; Their lives,
their natures moved compelled by hers As if the truth of their own larger
selves Put on an aspect of divinity To exalt them to a pitch beyond their
earth's. They felt a larger future meet their walk; She held their hands,
she chose for them their paths: They were moved by her towards great unknown
things, Faith drew them and the joy to feel themselves hers; They lived
in her, they saw the world with her eyes. Some turned to her against their
nature's bent; Divided between wonder and revolt, Drawn by her charm and
mastered by her will, Possessed by her, her striving to
possess, Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts Hugging the bonds
close of which they most complained, Murmured at a yoke they would have wept
to lose, The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love: Others pursued her
with life's blind desires And claiming all of her as their lonely
own, Hastened to engross her sweetness meant for all. As earth claims
light for its lone separate need Demanding her for their sole jealous
clasp, They asked from her movements bounded like their own And to their
smallness craved a like response. Or they repined that she surpassed their
grip, And hoped to bind her close with longing's cords. Or finding her
touch desired too strong to bear They blamed her for a tyranny they
loved, Shrank into themselves as from too bright a sun, Yet hankered for
the splendour they refused. Angrily enamoured of her sweet passionate
ray The weakness of their earth could hardly bear, They longed but cried
out at the touch desired Inapt to meet divinity so close, Intolerant of a
Force they could not house. Some drawn unwillingly by her divine
sway Endured it like a sweet but alien spell; Unable to mount to levels
too sublime, They yearned to draw her down to their own earth. Or forced
to centre round her their passionate lives, They hoped to bind to their
heart's human needs Her glory and grace that had enslaved their
souls.
But mid this world, these hearts that answered her call, None
could stand up her equal and her mate. In vain she stooped to equal them
with her heights, Too pure that air was for small souls to breathe. These
comrade selves to raise to her own wide breadths Her heart desired and fill
with her own power That a diviner Force might enter life, A breath of
Godhead greaten human time. Although she leaned down to their
littleness Covering their lives with her strong passionate hands And knew
by sympathy their needs and wants And dived in the shallow wave-depths of
their lives And met and shared their heart-beats of grief and joy And
bent to heal their sorrow and their pride, Lavishing the might that was hers
on her lone peak To lift to it their aspiration's cry, And though she
drew their souls into her vast And surrounded with the silence of her
deeps And held as the great Mother holds her own, Only her earthly
surface bore their charge And mixed its fire with their mortality: Her
greater self lived sole, unclaimed, within. Oftener in dumb Nature's stir
and peace A nearness she could feel serenely one; The Force in her drew
earth's subhuman broods; And to her spirit's large and free delight She
joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives Of animal and bird and flower and
tree. They answered to her with the simple heart. In man a dim disturbing
somewhat lives; It knows but turns away from divine Light Preferring the
dark ignorance of the fall. Among the many who came drawn to her Nowhere
she found her partner of high tasks, The comrade of her soul, her other
self Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one. Some near
approached, were touched, caught fire, then failed, Too great was her
demand, too pure her force. Thus lighting earth around her like a
sun, Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof, A distance severed her from
those most close. Puissant, apart her soul as the gods live.
As yet
unlinked with the broad human scene, In a small circle of young eager
hearts, Her being's early school and closed domain, Apprentice in the
business of earth-life, She schooled her heavenly strain to bear its
touch, Content in her little garden of the gods As blooms a flower in an
unvisited place. Earth nursed, unconscious still, the inhabiting
flame, Yet something deeply stirred and dimly knew; There was a movement
and a passionate call, A rainbow dream, a hope of golden change; Some
secret wing of expectation beat, A growing sense of something new and
rare And beautiful stole across the heart of Time. Then a faint whisper
of her touched the soil, Breathed like a hidden need the soul
divines; The eye of the great world discovered her And wonder lifted up
its bardic voice. A key to a Light still kept in being's cave, The
sun-word of an ancient mystery's sense, Her name ran murmuring on the lips
of men Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse Struck from the epic lyre
of rumour's winds Or sung like a chanted thought by the poet Fame. But
like a sacred symbol's was that cult. Admired, unsought, intangible to the
grasp Her beauty and flaming strength were seen afar Like lightning
playing with the fallen day, A glory unapproachably divine. No equal
heart came close to join her heart, No transient earthly love assailed her
calm, No hero passion had the strength to seize; No eyes demanded her
replying eyes. A Power within her awed the imperfect flesh; The
self-protecting genius in our clay Divined the goddess in the woman's
shape And drew back from a touch beyond its kind The earth-nature bound
in sense-life's narrow make. The hearts of men are amorous of
clay-kin And bear not spirits lone and high who bring Fire-intimations
from the deathless planes Too vast for souls not born to mate with
heaven. Whoever is too great must lonely live. Adored he walks in mighty
solitude; Vain is his labour to create his kind, His only comrade is the
Strength within. Thus was it for a while with Savitri. All worshipped
marvellingly, none dared to claim. Her mind sat high pouring its golden
beams, Her heart was a crowded temple of delight. A single lamp lit in
perfection's house, A bright pure image in a priestless shrine, Midst
those encircling lives her spirit dwelt, Apart in herself until her hour of
fate.
in "Savitri" - SABCL Volume 29
- (pages 359-368)
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
|