Aurobindo 27-Savitri-Book -2

An appreciation on Savitri Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds Canto V The Godheads of the Little Life Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's 'A fixed and narrow power with rigid forms, He saw the empire of the little life, An unhappy corner in eternity.' 'Then, hoping to learn the secret of this world He peered across its scanty fringe of sight, ' 'A busy restless uncouth populace Teemed in their dusky unnoted thousands there.' I bow, what an expression wonderful on 'uncouth populace'! 'In a mist of secrecy wrapping the world-scene The little deities of Time's nether act Who work remote from Heaven's controlling eye, Plotted, unknown to the creatures whom they move, The small conspiracies of this petty reign Amused with the small contrivings, the brief hopes And little eager steps and little ways' ' And the crouch and ignominy of creeping life.' 'Astonished by the unaccustomed glow, As if immanent in the shadows started up Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages, Sprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small, And genii fairer but unsouled and poor And fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost, And errant divinities trapped in Time's dust.' Ignorant and dangerous wills but armed with power..' 'Out of the greyness of a dim background Their whispers come, an inarticulate force, Awake in mind an echoing thought or word, To their sting of impulse the heart's sanction draw, And in that little Nature do their work And fill its powers and creatures with unease.' ............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 4 Page 151 It lived upon the margin of the Idea Protected by Ignorance as in a shell. He plunged his gaze into the siege of mist That held this ill-lit straitened continent Ringed with the skies and seas of ignorance And kept it safe from Truth and Self and Light. As when a searchlight stabs the Night's blind breast And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness, All lurking things were torn out of their veils And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze. Page 152 A trepidant and motley multitude, A strange pell-mell of magic artisans, Was seen moulding the plastic clay of life, An elfin brood, an elemental kind. Its seed of joy they curse with sorrow's fruit, Put out with error's breath its scanty lights And turn its surface truths to falsehood's ends,