Savitri

Canto Three 

 

The Call to the Quest 

 

A morn that seemed a new creation’s front,

Bringing a greater sunlight, happier skies,

Came, burdened with a beauty moved and strange

Out of the changeless origin of things.

An ancient longing struck again new roots.

The air drank deep of unfulfilled desire;

The high trees trembled with a wandering wind

Like souls that quiver at the approach of joy,

And in a bosom of green secrecy

For ever of its one love-note untired

A lyric coïl cried among the leaves.

Away from the terrestrial murmur turned

Where transient calls and answers mix their flood,

King Aswapathy listened through the ray

To other sounds than meet the sense-formed ear.

On a subtle interspace which rings our Life,

Unlocked were the inner spirit’s trance-closed doors:

The inaudible strain in Nature could be caught;

Across this cyclic tramp of eager lives,

Across the deep urgency of present cares,

Earth’s wordless hymn to the Ineffable

Arose from the ardent heart of the cosmic Void;

He heard the voice repressed of unborn Powers

Murmuring behind the luminous bars of Time.

Again the mighty yearning raised its flame

That asks a perfect life on earth for men

And prays for certainty in the uncertain mind

And shadowless bliss for suffering human hearts

And Truth embodied in an ignorant world

And godhead divinising mortal forms.

A word that leaped from some far sky of thought, 

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Admitted by the cowled receiving scribe

Traversed the echoing passages of his brain

And left its stamp on the recording cells.

“O Force-compelled, Fate-driven earth-born race,

O petty adventurers in an infinite world

And prisoners of a dwarf humanity,

How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind

Around your little self and petty things?

But not for a changeless littleness were you meant,

Not for vain repetition were you built;

Out of the Immortal’s substance you were made;

Your actions can be swift revealing steps,

Your life a changeful mould for growing gods.

A Seer, a strong Creator, is within,

The immaculate Grandeur broods upon your days,

Almighty powers are shut in Nature’s cells.

A greater destiny waits you in your front:

This transient earthly being if he wills

Can fit his acts to a transcendent scheme.

He who now stares at the world with ignorant eyes

Hardly from the Inconscient’s night aroused,

That look at images and not at Truth

Can fill those orbs with an immortal’s sight.

Yet shall the godhead grow within your hearts,

You shall awake into the spirit’s air

And feel the breaking walls of mortal mind

And hear the message which left life’s heart dumb

And look through Nature with sun-gazing lids

And blow your conch-shells at the Eternal’s gate.

Authors of earth’s high change, to you it is given

To cross the dangerous spaces of the soul

And touch the mighty Mother stark awake

And meet the Omnipotent in this house of flesh

And make of life the million-bodied One.

The earth you tread is a border screened from heaven,

The life you lead conceals the light you are. 

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Immortal Powers sweep flaming past your doors;

Far-off upon your tops the god-chant sounds

While to exceed yourselves thought’s trumpets call,

Heard by a few, but fewer dare aspire,

The nympholepts of the ecstasy and the blaze.

An epic of hope and failure breaks earth’s heart;

Her force and will exceed her form and fate.

A goddess in a net of inconscience caught,

Self-bound in the pastures of death she dreams of life,

Self-racked with the pains of hell aspires to joy,

And builds to hope her altars of despair,

Knows that one high step might enfranchise all

And, suffering, looks for greatness in her sons.

But dim in human hearts the ascending fire,

The invisible Grandeur sits unworshipped there;

Man sees the Highest in a limiting form

Or looks upon a Person, hears a Name.

He turns for little gains to ignorant Powers

Or kindles his altar lights to a demon face.

He loves the Ignorance fathering his pain.

A spell is laid upon his glorious strengths.

He has lost the inner Voice that led his thoughts,

And masking the oracular tripod seat

A specious Idol fills the marvel shrine.

The great Illusion wraps him in its veils,

The soul’s deep intimations come in vain,

In vain is the unending line of seers,

The sages ponder in unsubstantial light,

The poets lend their voice to outward dreams,

A homeless fire inspires the prophet tongues.

Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return,

The luminous Eye approaches and retires;

Eternity speaks, none understands its word;

Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies;

The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.

Only a little lifted is Mind’s screen. 

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The Wise who know see but one half of Truth,

The strong climb hardly to a low-peaked height,

The hearts that yearn are given one hour to love,

His tale half-told, falters the secret Bard;

The gods are still too few in mortal forms.”

The Voice withdrew into its hidden skies.

But like a shining answer from the gods

Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.

Advancing amid tall heaven-pillaring trees,

Apparelled in her flickering-coloured robe,

She seemed burning towards the eternal realms

A bright moved torch of incense and of flame

That from the sky-roofed temple-soil of earth

A pilgrim hand lifts in an invisible shrine.

There came the gift of a revealing hour:

He saw through depths that reinterpret all,

Limited not now by the dull body’s eyes,

New-found through an arch of clear discovery,

This intimation of the world’s delight,

This wonder of the divine Artist’s make

Carved like a nectar-cup for thirsty gods,

This breathing Scripture of the Eternal’s joy,

This net of sweetness woven of aureate fire.

Transformed the delicate image-face became

A deeper Nature’s self-revealing sign,

A gold-leaf palimpsest of sacred births,

A grave world-symbol chiselled out of life.

Her brow, a copy of clear unstained heavens,

Was meditation’s pedestal and defence,

The very room and smile of musing Space,

Its brooding line infinity’s symbol curve.

Amid her tresses’ cloudy multitude

The long eyes shadowed as by wings of Night

Under that moon-gold forehead’s dreaming breadth

Were seas of love and thought that held the world;

Marvelling at life and earth they saw truths far.

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A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;

As in a golden vase’s poignant line

They seemed to carry the rhythmic sob of bliss

Of earth’s mute adoration towards heaven

Released in beauty’s cry of living form

Towards the perfection of eternal things.

Transparent grown the ephemeral living dress

Bared the expressive deity to his view.

Escaped from surface sight and mortal sense

The seizing harmony of its shapes became

The strange significant icon of a Power

Renewing its inscrutable descent

Into a human figure of its works

That stood out in life’s bold abrupt relief

On the soil of the evolving universe,

A godhead sculptured on a wall of thought,

Mirrored in the flowing hours and dimly shrined

In Matter as in a cathedral cave.

Annulled were the transient values of the mind,

The body’s sense renounced its earthly look,

Immortal met immortal in their gaze.

Awaked from the close spell of daily use

That hides soul-truth with the outward form’s disguise,

He saw through the familiar cherished limbs

The great and unknown spirit born his child.

An impromptu from the deeper sight within,

Thoughts rose in him that knew not their own scope.

Then to those large and brooding depths whence Love

Regarded him across the straits of mind,

He spoke in sentences from the unseen Heights.

A casual passing phrase can change our life.

For the hidden prompters of our speech sometimes

Can use the formulas of a moment’s mood

To weigh unconscious lips with words from Fate:

“O Spirit, traveller of eternity,

Who camest from the immortal spaces here

Armed for the splendid hazard of thy life 

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To set thy conquering foot on Chance and Time,

The moon shut in her halo dreams like thee.

A mighty Presence still defends thy frame.

Perhaps the heavens guard thee for some great soul,

Thy fate, thy work are kept somewhere afar,

Thy spirit came not down a star alone.

O living inscription of the beauty of love

Missalled in aureate virginity,

What message of heavenly strength and bliss in thee

Is written with the Eternal’s sun-white script,

One shall discover and greaten with it his life

To whom thou loosenest thy heart’s jewelled strings.

O rubies of silence, lips from which there stole

Low laughter, music of tranquillity,

Star-lustrous eyes awake in sweet large night

And limbs like fine-linked poems made of gold

Stanzaed to glimmering curves by artist gods,

Depart where love and destiny call your charm.

Venture through the deep world to find thy mate.

For somewhere on the longing breast of earth,

Thy unknown lover waits for thee the unknown.

Thy soul has strength and needs no other guide

Than One who burns within thy bosom’s powers.

There shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps

The second self for whom thy nature asks,

He who shall walk until thy body’s end

A close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace,

The lyrist of thy soul’s most intimate chords

Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute.

Then shall you grow like vibrant kindred harps,

One in the beats of difference and delight,

Responsive in divine and equal strains,

Discovering new notes of the eternal theme.

One force shall be your mover and your guide,

One light shall be around you and within;

Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life: 

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Challenge the ordeal of the immense disguise.

Ascend from Nature to divinity’s heights;

Face the high gods, crowned with felicity,

Then meet a greater God, thy self beyond Time.”

This word was seed of all the thing to be.

A hand from some Greatness opened her heart’s locked doors

And showed the work for which her strength was born.

As when the mantra sinks in Yoga’s ear,

Its message enters stirring the blind brain

And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;

The hearer understands a form of words

And, musing on the index thought it holds,

He strives to read it with the labouring mind,

But finds bright hints, not the embodied truth:

Then, falling silent in himself to know

He meets the deeper listening of his soul:

The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:

Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s self

Are seized unulterably and he endures

An ecstasy and an immortal change;

He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,

All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:

Transmuted by the white spiritual ray

He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,

Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech:

An equal greatness in her life was sown.

Accustomed scenes were now an ended play.

Moving in muse amid familiar powers,

Touched by new magnitudes and faery signs,

She turned to vastnesses not yet her own;

Allured her heart throbbed to unknown sweetnesses,

The secrets of an unseen world were close.

The morn went up into a smiling sky;

Cast from its sapphire pinnacle of trance

Day sank into the burning gold of eve;

The moon floated, a luminous waif through heaven, 

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And sank below the oblivious edge of dream;

Night lit the watch-fires of eternity.

Then all went back into mind’s secret caves;

A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird’s wings

Sealed in her senses from external sight

And opened the stupendous depths of sleep.

When the pale dawn slipped through Night’s shadowy guard,

Vainly the new-born light desired her face;

The palace woke to its own emptiness;

The sovereign of its daily joys was far;

Her moonbeam feet tinged not the lucent floors:

The beauty and divinity were gone.

Delight had fled to search the spacious world.

 

End of Canto Three 

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