Aurobindo-22-Savitri-Book -2

An appreciation on Savitri- Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds Canto III The Glory and the Fall of Life Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's 'There were realms where Knowledge joined creative Power In her high home and made her all his own: ' 'She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed, To thinking a need to live what the soul saw, To living an impetus to know and see. His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung; ' She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes, And her acts the living body of his will. 'A flaming thunder, a creator flash, His victor Light rode on her deathless Force; A centaur's mighty gallop bore the god.' 'Life throned with mind, a double majesty.' Worlds were there of a childlike mirth and joy; A carefree youthfulness of mind and heart Found in the body a heavenly instrument; 'Life was an eternity of rapture's moods: 'Ideas were luminous comrades of the soul; Mind played with speech, cast javelins of thought, But needed not these instruments' toil to know; Knowledge was Nature's pastime like the rest.' 'Investitured with the fresh heart's bright ray, An early God-instinct's child inheritors, ' Still thrilling with the first creation's bliss, 'They steeped existence in their youth of soul.' 'There freedom was sole rule and highest law.' 'In fields of grandeur and of titan power, Life played at ease with her immense desires.' 'This world of bliss he saw and felt its call, But found no way to enter into its joy; Across the conscious gulf there was no bridge.' ............My consciousness this moment, O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine May there so, let Savitri in my self arise Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune ======================================== Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and informative lines from Book 2 canto 3 Page 125 An immortal moth in happy and endless fire, She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze. Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes And her acts the living body of his will. Page 126 A carefree youthfulness of mind and heart Found in the body a heavenly instrument; It lit an aureate halo round desire And freed the deified animal in the limbs To divine gambols of love and beauty and bliss. On a radiant soil that gazed at heaven's smile A swift life-impulse stinted not nor stopped: Imposing on the safety of the stars A race and laughter of immortal strengths, The nude god-children in their play-fields ran Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed; Of storm and sun they made companions, Sported with the white mane of tossing seas, Slew distance trampled to death under their wheels And wrestled in the arenas of their force. Page 127 A sovereignty of tireless sweetness lived Like a song of pleasure on the lips of Time. Page 128 Smiling like a new-born child at love and hope, In her nature housing the Immortal's power, In her bosom bearing the eternal Will, No guide she needed but her luminous heart: No fall debased the godhead of her steps, No alien Night had come to blind her eyes. There was no use for grudging ring or fence; At will she wove her wizard wonder-dance, A Dionysian goddess of delight, A Bacchant of creative ecstasy. Page 129 A dire duality is our way to be. In the crude beginnings of this mortal world Life was not nor mind's play nor heart's desire. When earth was built in the unconscious Void And nothing was save a material scene, Identified with sea and sky and stone Her young gods yearned for the release of souls Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate. In that desolate grandeur, in that beauty bare, In the deaf stillness, mid the unheeded sounds, Heavy was the uncommunicated load Of Godhead in a world that had no needs; For none was there to feel or to receive. The poised inconscience shaken with a touch, The intuitive Silence trembling with a name, They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould And in brute forms awake divinity. A voice was heard on the mute rolling globe, A murmur moaned in the unlistening Void. A being seemed to breathe where once was none: Page 130 Life heard the call and left her native light. Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space, Here too the gracious great-winged Angel poured Her splendour and her swiftness and her bliss, Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy. As comes a goddess to a mortal's breast And fills his days with her celestial clasp, She stooped to make her home in transient shapes; In Matter's womb she cast the Immortal's fire, In the unfeeling Vast woke thought and hope, Smote with her charm and beauty flesh and nerve And forced delight on earth's insensible frame. Alive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers Earth's great brown body smiled towards the skies, Azure replied to azure in the sea's laugh; Interned now in the slow and suffering years Sojourns the winged and wonderful wayfarer And can no more recall her happier state, But must obey the inert Inconscient's law, Insensible foundation of a world In which blind limits are on beauty laid And sorrow and joy as struggling comrades live. End of Book 2-Canto3