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Savitri
by Sri Aurobindo
Part Two
Book Five - The Book of Love
Canto Two
Satyavan
All she remembered
on this day of Fate, The road that hazarded not the solemn depths But
turned away to flee to human homes, The wilderness with its mighty
monotone, The morning like a lustrous seer above, The passion of the
summits lost in heaven, The titan murmur of the endless woods. As if a
wicket gate to joy were there Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic
sign, Upon the margin of an unknown world Reclined the curve of a
sun-held recess; Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing
nymphs Peered from their secrecy into open space, Boughs whispering to a
constancy of light Sheltered a dim and screened felicity, And slowly a
supine inconstant breeze Ran like a fleeting sigh of happiness Over
slumbrous grasses pranked with green and gold. Hidden in the forest's bosom
of loneliness Amid the leaves the inmate voices called, Sweet like
desires enamoured and unseen, Cry answering to low insistent cry. Behind
slept emerald dumb remotenesses, Haunt of a Nature passionate, veiled,
denied To all but her own vision lost and wild. Earth in this beautiful
refuge free from cares Murmured to the soul a song of strength and
peace. Only one sign was there of a human tread: A single path, shot thin
and arrowlike Into this bosom of vast and secret life, Pierced its
enormous dream of solitude. Here first she met on the uncertain earth The
one for whom her heart had come so far. As might a soul on Nature's
background limned Stand out for a moment in a house of dream Created by
the ardent breath of life, So he appeared against the forest verge Inset
twixt green relief and golden ray. As if a weapon of the living
Light, Erect and lofty like a spear of God His figure led the splendour
of the morn. Noble and clear as the broad peaceful heavens A tablet of
young wisdom was his brow; Freedom's imperious beauty curved his
limbs, The joy of life was on his open face. His look was a wide daybreak
of the gods, His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light, His body
was a lover's and a king's. In the magnificent dawning of his force Built
like a moving statue of delight He illumined the border of the forest
page. Out of the ignorant eager toil of the years Abandoning man's loud
drama he had come Led by the wisdom of an adverse Fate To meet the
ancient Mother in her groves. In her divine communion he had grown A
foster-child of beauty and solitude, Heir to the centuries of the lonely
wise, A brother of the sunshine and the sky, A wanderer communing with
depth and marge. A Veda-knower of the unwritten book Perusing the mystic
scripture of her forms, He had caught her hierophant significances, Her
sphered immense imaginations learned, Taught by sublimities of stream and
wood And voices of the sun and star and flame And chant of the magic
singers on the boughs And the dumb teaching of four-footed
things. Helping with confident steps her slow great hands He leaned to
her influence like a flower to rain And, like the flower and tree a natural
growth, Widened with the touches of her shaping hours. The mastery free
natures have was his And their assent to joy and spacious calm; One with
the single Spirit inhabiting all, He laid experience at the Godhead's
feet; His mind was open to her infinite mind, His acts were rhythmic with
her primal force; He had subdued his mortal thought to hers. That day he
had turned from his accustomed paths; For One who, knowing every moment's
load, Can move in all our studied or careless steps, Had laid the spell
of destiny on his feet And drawn him to the forest's flowering verge. At
first her glance that took life's million shapes Impartially to people its
treasure-house Along with sky and flower and hill and star, Dwelt rather
on the bright harmonious scene. It saw the green-gold of the slumbrous
sward, The grasses quivering with the slow wind's tread, The branches
haunted by the wild bird's call. Awake to Nature, vague as yet to
life, The eager prisoner from the Infinite, The immortal wrestler in its
mortal house, Its pride, power, passion of a striving God, It saw this
image of veiled deity, This thinking master creature of the earth, This
last result of the beauty of the stars, But only saw like fair and common
forms The artist spirit needs not for its work And puts aside in memory's
shadowy rooms. A look, a turn decides our ill-poised fate. Thus in the
hour that most concerned her all, Wandering unwarned by the slow surface
mind, The heedless scout beneath her tenting lids Admired indifferent
beauty and cared not To wake her body's spirit to its king. So might she
have passed by on chance ignorant roads Missing the call of Heaven, losing
life's aim, But the god touched in time her conscious soul. Her vision
settled, caught and all was changed. Her mind at first dwelt in ideal
dreams, Those intimate transmuters of earth's signs That make known
things a hint of unseen spheres, And saw in him the genius of the spot, A
symbol figure standing mid earth's scenes, A king of life outlined in
delicate air. Yet this was but a moment's reverie; For suddenly her heart
looked out at him, The passionate seeing used thought cannot match, And
knew one nearer than its own close strings. All in a moment was surprised
and seized, All in inconscient ecstasy lain wrapped Or under
imagination's coloured lids Held up in a large mirror-air of dream, Broke
forth in flame to recreate the world, And in that flame to new things she
was born. A mystic tumult from her depths arose; Haled, smitten erect
like one who dreamed at ease, Life ran to gaze from every gate of
sense: Thoughts indistinct and glad in moon-mist heavens, Feelings as
when a universe takes birth, Swept through the turmoil of her bosom's
space Invaded by a swarm of golden gods: Arising to a hymn of wonder's
priests Her soul flung wide its doors to this new sun. An alchemy worked,
the transmutation came; The missioned face had wrought the Master's
spell. In the nameless light of two approaching eyes A swift and fated
turning of her days Appeared and stretched to a gleam of unknown
worlds. Then trembling with the mystic shock her heart Moved in her
breast and cried out like a bird Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring
bough. Hooves trampling fast, wheels largely stumbling ceased; The
chariot stood like an arrested wind. And Satyavan looked out from his soul's
doors And felt the enchantment of her liquid voice Fill his youth's
purple ambience and endured The haunting miracle of a perfect
face. Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth, Drawn to
soul-spaces opening round a brow, He turned to the vision like a sea to the
moon And suffered a dream of beauty and of change, Discovered the aureole
round a mortal's head, Adored a new divinity in things. His self-bound
nature foundered as in fire; His life was taken into another's life. The
splendid lonely idols of his brain Fell prostrate from their bright
sufficiencies, As at the touch of a new infinite, To worship a godhead
greater than their own. An unknown imperious force drew him to
her. Marvelling he came across the golden sward: Gaze met close gaze and
clung in sight's embrace. A visage was there, noble and great and
calm, As if encircled by a halo of thought, A span, an arch of meditating
light, As though some secret nimbus half was seen; Her inner vision still
remembering knew A forehead that wore the crown of all her past, Two eyes
her constant and eternal stars, Comrade and sovereign eyes that claimed her
soul, Lids known through many lives, large frames of love. He met in her
regard his future's gaze, A promise and a presence and a fire, Saw an
embodiment of aeonic dreams, A mystery of the rapture for which
all Yearns in this world of brief mortality Made in material shape his
very own. This golden figure given to his grasp Hid in its breast the key
of all his aims, A spell to bring the Immortal's bliss on earth, To mate
with heaven's truth our mortal thought, To lift earth-hearts nearer the
Eternal's sun. In these great spirits now incarnate here Love brought
down power out of eternity To make of life his new undying base. His
passion surged a wave from fathomless deeps; It leaped to earth from far
forgotten heights, But kept its nature of infinity. On the dumb bosom of
this oblivious globe Although as unknown beings we seem to meet, Our
lives are not aliens nor as strangers join, Moved to each other by a
causeless force. The soul can recognise its answering soul Across
dividing Time and, on life's roads Absorbed wrapped traveller, turning it
recovers Familiar splendours in an unknown face And touched by the
warning finger of swift love It thrills again to an immortal joy Wearing
a mortal body for delight. There is a Power within that knows beyond Our
knowings; we are greater than our thoughts, And sometimes earth unveils that
vision here. To live, to love are signs of infinite things, Love is a
glory from eternity's spheres. Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser
mights That steal his name and shape and ecstasy, He is still the godhead
by which all can change. A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff, A
bliss is born that can remake our life. Love dwells in us like an unopened
flower Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul, Or he roams in his charmed
sleep mid thoughts and things; The child-god is at play, he seeks
himself In many hearts and minds and living forms: He lingers for a sign
that he can know And, when it comes, wakes blindly to a voice, A look, a
touch, the meaning of a face. His instrument the dim corporeal mind, Of
celestial insight now forgetful grown, He seizes on some sign of outward
charm To guide him mid the throng of Nature's hints, Reads heavenly
truths into earth's semblances, Desires the image for the godhead's
sake, Divines the immortalities of form And takes the body for the
sculptured soul. Love's adoration like a mystic seer Through vision looks
at the invisible, In earth's alphabet finds a godlike sense; But the mind
only thinks, Behold the one For whom my life has waited long
unfilled, Behold the sudden sovereign of my days. Heart feels for
heart, limb cries for answering limb; All strives to enforce the unity all
is. Too far from the Divine, Love seeks his truth And Life is blind and
the instruments deceive And Powers are there that labour to debase. Still
can the vision come, the joy arrive. Rare is the cup fit for love's nectar
wine, As rare the vessel that can hold God's birth; A soul made ready
through a thousand years Is the living mould of a supreme Descent. These
knew each other though in forms thus strange. Although to sight unknown,
though life and mind Had altered to hold a new significance, These bodies
summed the drift of numberless births, And the spirit to the spirit was the
same. Amazed by a joy for which they had waited long, The lovers met upon
their different paths, Travellers across the limitless plains of
Time Together drawn from fate-led journeyings In the self-closed solitude
of their human past, To a swift rapturous dream of future joy And the
unexpected present of these eyes. By the revealing greatness of a
look, Form-smitten the spirit's memory woke in sense. The mist was torn
that lay between two lives; Her heart unveiled and his to find her
turned; Attracted as in heaven star by star, They wondered at each other
and rejoiced And wove affinity in a silent gaze. A moment passed that was
eternity's ray, An hour began, the matrix of new Time.
in "Savitri" - SABCL Volume 29
- (pages 392-399)
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
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