ÑÀÉÒ ØÐÈ ÀÓÐÎÁÈÍÄÎ È ÌÀÒÅÐÈ
      
Äîìàøíÿÿ ñòðàíèöà | Ðàáîòû | Àóäèî êîëëåêöèÿ

Øðè Àóðîáèíäî. Ìàòü

Ñàâèòðè

×èòàåò Ìàòü

Ñîäåðæàíèå

×àñòü 1. ×òåíèå Ìàòåðè è ìóçûêà Ñóíèëà

×àñòü 2. ×òåíèå Ìàòåðè ñ ñîïðîâîäèòåëüíûì òåêñòîì áåç ìóçûêè Ñóíèëà
    (íåêîòîðûå çàïèñè íå âõîäÿò â 1-þ ÷àñòü!)


×àñòü 1

×òåíèå Ìàòåðè
è ìóçûêà Ñóíèëà


BOOK ONE. The Book of Beginnings

1. The Symbol Dawn

 

2. The Issue

 

3. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release

 

4. The Secret Knowledge

 

5. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness

 

BOOK TWO. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

1. The World-Stair

 

2. The Kingdom of Subtle Matter

 

3. The Glory and the Fall of Life

 

4. The Kingdoms of the Little Life

 

5. The Godheads of the Little Life

 

6. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life

 

7. The Descent into Night

 

9. The Paradise of the Life-Gods

 

10. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind

 

11. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

 

12. The Heavens of the Ideal

 

13. In the Self of Mind

 

14. The World-Soul

 

15. The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge

 

BOOK THREE. The Book of the Divine Mother

1. The Pursuit of the Unknowable

 

2. The Adoration of the Divine Mother

 

3. The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

 

4. The Vision and the Boon

 

BOOK FOUR. The Book of Birth and Quest

1. The Birth and Childhood of the Flame

 

2. The Growth of the Flame

 

3. The Call to the Quest

 

4. The Quest

 

BOOK FIVE. The Book of Love

1. The Destined Meeting-Place

 

2. Satyavan

 

3. Satyavan and Savitri

 

BOOK SIX. The Book of Fate

1. The Word of Fate

 

2. The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain

 

BOOK SEVEN. The Book of Yoga

1. The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief and Pain

 

2. The Parable of the Search for the Soul

 

3. The Entry into the Inner Countries

 

4. The Triple Soul-Forces

 

5. The Finding of the Soul

 

6. Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute

 

7. The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness

 

BOOK EIGHT. The Book of Death

3. Death in the Forest

 

BOOK NINE. The Book of Eternal Night

1. Towards the Black Void

 

2. The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness

 

BOOK TEN. The Book of the Double Twilight

1. The Dream Twilight of the Ideal

 

2. The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal

 

3. The Debate of Love and Death

 

4. The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real

 

×àñòü âòîðàÿ

×òåíèå Ìàòåðè
ñ ñîïðîâîäèòåëüíûì òåêñòîì
áåç ìóçûêè Ñóíèëà

Ñòðîêè ñîïðîâîäèòåëüíîãî òåêñòà ïðîíóìåðîâàíû ñîîòâåòñòâåííî èõ ìåñòó â îðèãèíàëüíîì òåêñòå. Êàæäûé áëîê ñ àóäèîçàïèñüþ íà÷èíàåòñÿ ñî ñòðîêè òàêîãî âèäà:

1) ññûëêà äëÿ ïðîñëóøèâàíèÿ àóäèî îí-ëàéí

2) ññûëêà äëÿ ñîõðàíåíèÿ àóäèî-ôàéëà íà Âàø êîìïüþòåð

3) ìåòêà, åñëè äàííàÿ çàïèñü íå âêëþ÷åíà â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé Ñóíèëà

4) íîìåð áëîêà, êîòîðûé ñîäåðæèò:

1) íîìåð Êíèãè

2) íîìåð Ïåñíè

3) íîìåð çàïèñè âíóòðè òåêóùåé Ïåñíè


Ñîäåðæàíèå

1. The Book of Beginnings

2. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

3. The Book of the Divine Mother

4. The Book of Birth and Quest

5. The Book of Love

6. The Book of Fate

7. The Book of Yoga

8. The Book of Death

9. The Book of Eternal Night

10. The Book of the Double Twilight

11. The Book of Everlasting Day

12. Epilogue


Book One. The Book of Beginnings

1.1 The Symbol Dawnh

1.1–1

 

001   It was the hour before the Gods awake.
002   Across the path of the divine Event
003   The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
004   In her unlit temple of eternity,
005   Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge.
006   Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
007   In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
008   The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
009   A fathomless zero occupied the world.

1.1–2

 

023   Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
024   Its formless stupor without mind or life,
025   A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
026   Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
027   Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
028   Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

1.1–3

 

030   Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
031   A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
032   Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
033   Something that wished but knew not how to be,
034   Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.

1.1–4

 

048   An unshaped consciousness desired light
049   And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
050   As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
051   Reminded of the endless need in things
052   The heedless Mother of the universe,
053   An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.

1.1–5

 

058   Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
059   An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
060   A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
061   It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
062   The torpor of a sick and weary world,
063   To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
064   Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.

1.1–6

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

078. All can be done if the god-touch is there.
079. A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
080. Amid the Night’s forlorn indifference.
...
085. Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
086. A slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal.
...
090. A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
091. That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,
092. Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
093. A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.
094. One lucent corner windowing hidden things
095. Forced the world’s blind immensity to sight.

1.1–7

 

096   The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
097   From the reclining body of a god.

1.1–8

 

102   A glamour from unreached transcendences
103   Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
104   A message from the unknown immortal Light
105   Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,
106   Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
107   And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.

1.1–9

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

109. On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood
110. And bent over earth’s pondering forehead curve.
...
120. Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
121. Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm
122. Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
123. A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.
124. Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
125. The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
126. That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
127. And saw the spaces ready for her feet.

1.1–10

 

130   Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close:
131   The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
132   And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
133   And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
134   Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.

1.1–11

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

135. All grew a consecration and a rite.
136. Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;
137. The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
138. Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
139. The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.

1.1–12

 

140   Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
141   On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
142   Here where one knows not even the step in front
143   And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
144   On this anguished and precarious field of toil
145   Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
146   Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
147   Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.

1.1–13

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

171. The excess of beauty natural to god-kind
172. Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes;
173. Too mystic-real for space-tenancy
174. Her body of glory was expunged from heaven:
175. The rarity and wonder lived no more.
176. There was the common light of earthly day.
...
180. All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
181. The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
182. Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge,
183. And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
184. Alone who stares at the future’s covered face,
185. Man lifted up the burden of his fate.

1.1–14

 

186   And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
187   That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner’s chant
. . .
205   A narrow movement on Time’s deep abysm,
206   Life’s fragile littleness denied the power,
207   The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
208   She had brought with her into the human form,
209   The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
210   The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.

1.1–15

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

211. Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears
212. Rejected the undying rapture’s boon:
213. Offered to the daughter of infinity
214. Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.
...
222. Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:
...
229. Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,
230. It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:
231. Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
232. It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
233. It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

1.1–16

 

247   Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
248   Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,
249   Outcast from her inborn felicity,
250   Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,
251   Hiding herself even from those she loved,
252   The godhead greater by a human fate.

1.1–17

 

282   Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots,
283   Her own calamity its private sign,
284   Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.

1.1–18

 

307   At the summons of her body’s voiceless call
308   Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
309   Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
310   Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
311   Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
312   Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.

1.1–19

 

341   Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
342   This was the day when Satyavan must die.

1.2. The Issue

1.2–1

 

025   An absolute supernatural darkness falls
026   On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
027   An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means;
028   Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
029   And flung back on his naked primal need,
030   He at length must cast from him his surface soul
031   And be the ungarbed entity within:
032   That hour had fallen now on Savitri.

1.2–2

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

094. Around her were the austere sky-pointing hills,
095. And the green murmurous broad deep-thoughted woods
096. Muttered incessantly their muffled spell.
097. A dense magnificent coloured self-wrapped life
098. Draped in the leaves’ vivid emerald monotone
099. And set with chequered sunbeams and blithe flowers
100. Immured her destiny’s secluded scene.
101. There had she grown to the stature of her spirit:

1.2–3

 

112   And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
113   And the brooding multitude of patient trees
114   And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky
115   And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months
116   Had left in her deep room for thought and God.
117   There was her drama’s radiant prologue lived.

1.2–4

 

124   Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
125   Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
126   Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
127   Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
128   Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.

1.2–5

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

134. All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
135. Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven,
136. Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
137. Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
138. Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
139. Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
140. Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
141. Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.

1.2–6

 

142   As in a mystic and dynamic dance
143   A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
144   Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault
145   Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
146   A heart of silence in the hands of joy
147   Inhabited with rich creative beats
148   A body like a parable of dawn
149   That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
150   Or golden temple-door to things beyond.

1.2–7

 

161   As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
162   Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
163   And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
164   In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
165   One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
166   Recover the lost habit of happiness,
167   Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
168   And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.

1.2–8

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

200. Almost they saw who lived within her light
201. Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres
202. Descended from its unattainable realms
203. In her attracting advent’s luminous wake,
204. The white-fire dragon-bird of endless bliss
205. Drifting with burning wings above her days:
206. Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.
...
233. Whether to bear with Ignorance and death
234. Or hew the ways of Immortality,
235. To win or lose the godlike game for man,
236. Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice.
237. But not to submit and suffer was she born;
238. To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.
...
241. An image fluttering on the screen of Fate,
242. Half-animated for a passing show,
243. Or a castaway on the ocean of Desire
244. Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport
245. And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,

1.2–9

 

246   A creature born to bend beneath the yoke,
247   A chattel and a plaything of Time’s lords,
248   Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed
249   One slow move forward on a measureless board
250   In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,—
251   Such is the human figure drawn by Time.

1.2–10

 

252   A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.

1.2–11

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

263. Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law,
264. At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace.

1.2–12

 

265   A grey tribunal of the Ignorance,
266   An Inquisition of the priests of Night
267   In judgment sit on the adventurer soul,
268   And the dual tables and the Karmic norm
269   Restrain the Titan in us and the God:
269   Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe
270   Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility.

1.2–13

 

274   Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.

1.2–14

 

327   A magic leverage suddenly is caught
328   That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will:
329   A prayer, a master act, a king idea
330   Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

1.2–15

 

364   A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
365   Empowered to force the door denied and closed
366   Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute
367   And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.

1.3. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release

1.3–1

 

001 A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth.
002   One in the front of the immemorial quest,
. . .
007   A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air,
008   Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power.

1.3–2

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

104. A Presence wrought behind the ambiguous screen:
...
112. Then came the abrupt transcendent miracle:
113. The masked immaculate Grandeur could outline,
114. At travail in the occult womb of life,
115. His dreamed magnificence of things to be.
116. A crown of the architecture of the worlds,
117. A mystery of married Earth and Heaven
...
119. A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time.
120. For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above.
...
124. The landmarks of the little person fell,
125. The island ego joined its continent.
126. Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:
127. Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown.
...
204. He sat in secret chambers looking out
205. Into the luminous countries of the unborn
206. Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true
...
212. He lived in the mystic space where thought is born
213. And will is nursed by an ethereal Power
214. And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths
215. Till it grows into the likeness of a god.

1.3–3

 

220   Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh
221   He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,
222   And peered into gleaming endless corridors,
223   Silent and listening in the silent heart
224   For the coming of the new and the unknown.
225   He gazed across the empty stillnesses
226   And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea
227   In the far avenues of the Beyond.

1.3–4

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

306. The kings of evil and the kings of good,
307. Appellants at the reason’s judgment seat,
308. Proclaimed the gospel of their opposites,
309. And all believed themselves spokesmen of God:
310. The gods of light and titans of the dark
311. Battled for his soul as for a costly prize.

1.3–5

 

359   There knowing herself by her own termless self,
360   Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute
361   Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,
362   All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.

1.3–6

 

451   An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
452   It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
453   Or a dull gravitation drags us down
454   To the blind driven inertia of our base.
455   This too the supreme Diplomat can use,
456   He makes our fall a means for greater rise.

1.3–7

 

481   Always the power poured back like sudden rain,
482   Or slowly in his breast a presence grew;
483   It clambered back to some remembered height
484   Or soared above the peak from which it fell.
485   Each time he rose there was a larger poise,
486   A dwelling on a higher spirit plane;
487   The Light remained in him a longer space.

1.3–8

 

534   Already in him was seen that task of Power:
535   Life made its home on the high tops of self;
536   His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;
537   Only life’s lower reaches remained dim.

1.3–9

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

544. Lightnings of glory after glory burned,
545. Experience was a tale of blaze and fire,
546. Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,
547. Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen;
548. Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought,
549. Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses,
550. Rivers poured down of bliss and luminous force,
551. Visits of beauty, storm-sweeps of delight
552. Rained from the all-powerful Mystery above.

1.3–10

 

553   Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience.
554   A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;
. . .
558   The voices that an inner listening hears
559   Conveyed to him their prophet utterances,
560   And flame-wrapped outbursts of the immortal Word
561   And flashes of an occult revealing Light
562   Approached him from the unreachable Secrecy.

1.3–11

 

575   Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
576   A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
577   Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
578   Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
. . .
596   All-vision gathered into a single ray,
597   As when the eyes stare at an invisible point
598   Till through the intensity of one luminous spot
599   An apocalypse of a world of images
600   Enters into the kingdom of the seer.

1.3–12

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

601. A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose;
602. It rent the gauze opaque of Nescience:
603. Her lifted finger's keen unthinkable tip
604. Bared with a stab of flame the closed Beyond.

1.3–13

 

615   Or she gathered the lost secrets dropped by Time
616   In the dust and crannies of his mounting route
617   Mid old forsaken dreams of hastening Mind
618   And buried remnants of forgotten space.

1.3–14

 

619   A traveller between summit and abyss,
620   She joined the distant ends, the viewless deeps

1.3–15

 

696   The inspiring goddess entered a mortal’s breast,
697   Made there her study of divining thought
698   And sanctuary of prophetic speech
699   And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:
700   All was made wide above, all lit below.
701   In darkness’ core she dug out wells of light,
702   On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,
703   Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts

1.3–16

 

809   A genius heightened in his body’s cells
810   That knew the meaning of his fate-hedged works
811   Akin to the march of unaccomplished Powers
812   Beyond life’s arc in spirit’s immensities.
813   Apart he lived in his mind’s solitude,
814   A demigod shaping the lives of men:
815   One soul’s ambition lifted up the race;
. . .
819   He drew the energies that transmute an age.

1.4. The Secret Knowledge

1.4–1

 

001   On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.
002   Our early approaches to the Infinite
003   Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge
004   While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.
005   What now we see is a shadow of what must come.

1.4–2

 

033   A shapeless memory lingers in us still
034   And sometimes, when our sight is turned within,
035   Earth’s ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;
036   There is a short miraculous escape.

1.4–3

 

040   Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
041   Still regions of imperishable Light,
042   All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
043   And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
044   And calm immensities of spirit space.

1.4–4

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

065. In moments when the inner lamps are lit
066. And the life’s cherished guests are left outside,
067. Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.

1.4–5

 

111   A treasure of honey in the combs of God,
112   A Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,
113   It is our glory of the flame of God,
114   Our golden fountain of the world’s delight,
115   An immortality cowled in the cape of death,
116   The shape of our unborn divinity.

1.4–6

 

160   Along a path of aeons serpentine
161   In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
162   The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.

1.4–7

 

163   A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
164   A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
165   A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
166   In her unconscious orbit through the Void
167   Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
168   A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;

1.4–8

 

178   Ignorant and weary and invincible,
179   She seeks through the soul’s war and quivering pain
180   The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
181   A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.

1.4–9

 

185   A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,
186   Her state she learns to read and the act she has done,
187   But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,
188   Herself and all of which she is the sign.

1.4–10

 

199   A vision meets her of supernal Powers
200   That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
201   Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.
202   Then is she moved to all that she is not
203   And stretches arms to what was never hers.

1.4–11

 

204   Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
205   Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods
206   Soliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time
207   What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
208   A Mind unvisited by illusion’s gleams,
209   A Will expressive of soul’s deity,
210   A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
211   A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.

1.4–12

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

280. Only the Immortals on their deathless heights
...
285. Can see the Idea, the Might that change Time’s course,
286. Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds,
287. Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,
288. The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,
289. Bearing the superhuman Rider, near
290. And, impassive to earth’s din and startled cry,
291. Return to the silence of the hills of God;
292. As lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass
293. And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life.
294. Above the world the world-creators stand,
295. In the phenomenon see its mystic source.
296. These heed not the deceiving outward play,
297. They turn not to the moment’s busy tramp,
298. But listen with the still patience of the Unborn
299. For the slow footsteps of far Destiny
...
320. Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.
321. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
322. And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
323. As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
324. Of one who steps unseen into his house.

1.4–13

 

332   In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
. . .
338   A few shall see what none yet understands;
339   God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
340   For man shall not know the coming till its hour
341   And belief shall be not till the work is done.

1.4–14

 

394   In the wide signless ether of the Self,
395   In the unchanging Silence white and nude,
396   Aloof, resplendent like gold dazzling suns
397   Veiled by the ray no mortal eye can bear,
398   The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies
399   Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.

1.4–15

 

467   An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.
468   It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;
469   In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe
470   The one inevitable supreme result
471   No will can take away and no doom change,
472   The crown of conscious Immortality,
473   The godhead promised to our struggling souls
474   When first man’s heart dared death and suffered life.

1.4–16

 

499   In the mystery of the deeps that God has built
500   For his abode below the Thinker’s sight,
. . .
506   In this gold dome on a black dragon base,
507   The conscious Force that acts in Nature’s breast,
508   A dark-robed labourer in the cosmic scheme
509   Carrying clay images of unborn gods,
. . .
513   Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge.

1.4–17

 

551   There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
552   In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
553   And light and darkness are their eyes’ interchange;

1.4–18

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

568. Here on the earth where we must fill our parts,
569. We know not how shall run the drama’s course;
570. Our uttered sentences veil in their thought.
571. Her mighty plan she holds back from our sight:
572. She has concealed her glory and her bliss
573. And disguised the Love and Wisdom in her heart;
...
594. As one too great for him he worships her;
595. He adores her as his regent of desire,
596. He yields to her as the mover of his will,
597. He burns the incense of his nights and days
598. Offering his life, a splendour of sacrifice.
...
609. He leans on her for all he does and is:
610. He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
611. And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
612. And suns in the glory of her passing smile.
613. In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;
...
622. Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
623. His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
624. Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,
625. And none could bear but for his strength within,
626. Yet none would leave because of his delight.

1.4–19

 

627   His works, his thoughts have been devised by her,
628   His being is a mirror vast of hers:
629   Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
630   His deeds obey her heart’s unspoken demands:

1.4–20

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

659. His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
...
661. Her endless space is the playground of his thoughts;
...
689. To reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers;
690. He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
691. His face of human thought puts on a crown.
...
696. To obey she feigns, she follows her creature’s lead:
697. For him she was made, lives only for his use.
698. But conquering her, then is he most her slave;
699. He is her dependent, all his means are hers;
700. Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.
701. At last he wakes to a memory of Self:
702. He sees within the face of deity,
703. The Godhead breaks out through the human mould:
704. Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.
...
713. Obedient to World-Nature’s dumb control,
714. Driven by his own formidable Power,
715. His chosen partner in a titan game,
716. Her will he has made the master of his fate,
...
727. He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,
728. A tireless amateur of her world-delight,
729. He rejoices in her every thought and act
730. And gives consent to all that she can wish;

1.4–21

 

736   The master of existence lurks in us
737   And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
738   In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.
739   The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
740   He has made the universe his pastime’s field,
741   A vast gymnasium of his works of might.

1.4–22

 

771   Then in a figure of divinity
772   The Maker shall recast us and impose
773   A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
774   Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
775   Touching the moment with eternity.

1.4–23

 

776   This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
777   A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
778   His nature we must put on as he put ours;
779   We are sons of God and must be even as he:
780   His human portion, we must grow divine.
781   Our life is a paradox with God for key.

1.4–24

 

786   For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
787   The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.

1.4–25

 

824   He is the explorer and the mariner
825   On a secret inner ocean without bourne:
826   He is the adventurer and cosmologist
827   Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.

1.4–26

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

843. This is the sailor on the flow of Time,
...
856. He in a petty coastal traffic plies,
857. His pay doled out from port to neighbour port,
858. Content with his safe round’s unchanging course,
859. He hazards not the new and the unseen.
...
864. On a commissioned keel his merchant hull
865. Serves the world’s commerce in the riches of Time
866. Severing the foam of a great land-locked sea
867. To reach unknown harbour lights in distant climes
868. And open markets for life’s opulent arts,
869. Rich bales, carved statuettes, hued canvases,
870. And jewelled toys brought for an infant’s play

1.4–27

 

873   Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks,
. . .
884   He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
885   He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
886   Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
887   Its images veiling infinity.

1.4–28

 

888   Earth’s borders recede and the terrestrial air
889   Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
. . .
892   The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
893   Into Eyes that look upon eternity.

1.4–29

 

894   A greater world Time’s traveller must explore.
895   At last he hears a chanting on the heights
896   And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
897   He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
898   And passes over the edge of mortal sight
899   To a new vision of himself and things.

1.4–30

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

900. He is a spirit in an unfinished world
901. That knows him not and cannot know itself:
902. The surface symbol of his goalless quest
903. Takes deeper meanings to his inner view;
904. His is a search of darkness for the light,
905. Of mortal life for immortality.
906. In the vessel of an earthly embodiment
907. Over the narrow rails of limiting sense
908. He looks out on the magic waves of Time
909. Where mind like a moon illumines the world’s dark.
910. There is limned ever retreating from the eyes,
911. As if in a tenuous misty dream-light drawn,
912. The outline of a dim mysterious shore.
913. A sailor on the Inconscient’s fathomless sea,
914. He voyages through a starry world of thought
915. On Matter’s deck to a spiritual sun.
916. Across the noise and multitudinous cry,
917. Across the rapt unknowable silences,
918. Through a strange mid-world under supernal skies,
919. Beyond earth’s longitudes and latitudes,
920. His goal is fixed outside all present maps.

1.4–31

 

921   But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
922   Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
923   In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
924   Driven by her breath across life’s tossing deep,
925   Through the thunder’s roar and through the windless hush,
926   Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
927   He carries her sealed orders in his breast.

1.4–32

 

928   Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
929   Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
930   He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
931   A new mind and body in the city of God
931   And enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house
932   And make the finite one with Infinity.

1.4–33

 

941   A power is on him from her occult force
942   That ties him to his own creation’s fate,
943   And never can the mighty Traveller rest
944   And never can the mystic voyage cease
945   Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul
946   And the morns of God have overtaken his night.

1.4–34

 

947   As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
948   For this is sure that he and she are one;

1.4–35

 

957   This constant will she covered with her sport,
958   To evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,
959   With the Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,
960   Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
961   And raise a lost Power from its python sleep
962   That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
963   And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.

1.4–36

 

964   For this he left his white infinity
965   And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,
966   That Godhead’s seed might flower in mindless Space.

1.5. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness

1.5–1

 

001   This knowledge first he had of time-born men.
002   Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
003   That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight,
004   He found the occult cave, the mystic door
005   Near to the well of vision in the soul,
006   And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
007   In the silent space where all is for ever known.

1.5–2

 

020   There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
021   Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
022   And there the tables of the sacred Law,
. . .
027   The symbol powers of number and of form,
028   And the secret code of the history of the world
029   And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
030   Are written in the mystic heart of Life.

1.5–3

 

031   In the glow of the spirit’s room of memories
032   He could recover the luminous marginal notes
033   Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll,

1.5–4

 

071   He saw the unshaped thought in soulless forms,
072   Knew Matter pregnant with spiritual sense,
073   Mind dare the study of the Unknowable,
074   Life its gestation of the Golden Child.

1.5–5

 

079   A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
080   A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
081   A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
082   And Fate revealed a chain of seeing Will;
083   A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
084   In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.

1.5–6

 

085   A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
086   And to discern the superhuman’s form
087   He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
088   Aspiring to bring down a greater world.

1.5–7

 

129   A packed assemblage of crude tentative lives
130   Are pieced into a tessellated whole.

1.5–8

 

158   An animal with some instincts of a god,
159   His life a story too common to be told,
160   His deeds a number summing up to nought,
161   His consciousness a torch lit to be quenched,
162   His hope a star above a cradle and grave.

1.5–9

 

174   Impassive he lived immune from earthly hopes,
175   A figure in the ineffable Witness’ shrine
176   Pacing the vast cathedral of his thoughts
177   Under its arches dim with infinity
178   And heavenward brooding of invisible wings.

1.5–10

 

184   A universal light was in his eyes,
185   A golden influx flowed through heart and brain;
186   A Force came down into his mortal limbs,
187   A current from eternal seas of Bliss;
188   He felt the invasion and the nameless joy.

1.5–11

 

207   One-pointed to the immaculate Delight,
208   Questing for God as for a splendid prey,
209   He mounted burning like a cone of fire.

1.5–12

 

238   His spirit mingles with eternity’s heart
239   And bears the silence of the Infinite.

1.5–13

 

251   His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp.
. . .
256   In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
257   Hurried into unimaginable depths,
258   Upborne into immeasurable heights,
259   It was torn out from its mortality
260   And underwent a new and bourneless change.

1.5–14

 

267   As when a timeless Eye annuls the hours
268   Abolishing the agent and the act,
269   So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure:
270   His wakened mind became an empty slate
271   On which the Universal and Sole could write.

1.5–15

 

290   The little ego’s ring could join no more;
291   In the enormous spaces of the self
292   The body now seemed only a wandering shell,
293   His mind the many-frescoed outer court
294   Of an imperishable Inhabitant:
295   His spirit breathed a superhuman air.

1.5–16

 

319   There was no small death-hunted creature more,
320   No fragile form of being to preserve
321   From an all-swallowing Immensity.

1.5–17

 

330   A secret Nature stripped of her defence,
. . .
333   Lay bare to the burning splendour of his will.
. . .
345   Her diagrams of geometric force,
346   Her potencies of marvel-fraught design
347   Courted employment by an earth-nursed might.

1.5–18

 

476   A border sovereign is the occult Force.
. . .
494   A magic porch of entry glimmering
495   Quivered in a penumbra of screened Light,
496   A court of the mystical traffic of the worlds,
497   A balcony and miraculous fa‡ade.

1.5–19

 

524   Ascending and descending twixt life’s poles
525   The seried kingdoms of the graded Law
526   Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,
. . .
530   Climbed back from Time into undying Self,
531   Up a golden ladder carrying the soul,
532   Tying with diamond threads the Spirit’s extremes.

1.5–20

 

619   Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight
620   Stretched out in an ecstasy of widenesses
621   Beyond our indigent corporeal range.
 

Book Two
The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

2.1. The World-Stair

2.1–1

 

103   There walled apart by its own innerness
104   In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
105   He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
106   Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
107   Motionless under an inscrutable sky.

2.1–2

 

163   Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
164   These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
165   The wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall.
166   Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
167   The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
168   Has made her soul the body of our state;

2.1–3

 

196   The divine intention suddenly shall be seen,
197   The end vindicate intuition’s sure technique.

2.1–4

 

202   This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man
203   Shall stand out on the background of long Time
204   A glowing epitome of eternity,
205   A little point reveal the infinitudes.

2.1–5

 

214   A slow reversal’s movement then took place:
215   A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,
216   Of its dense rings were formed these million stars;
217   Upon earth’s new-born soil God’s tread was heard.

2.1–6

 

234   A miracle of the Absolute was born;
235   Infinity put on a finite soul,
236   All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
237   A time-made body housed the Illimitable.
238   To live this Mystery out our souls came here.

2.1–7

 

254   A figure sole on Nature’s giant stair,
255   He mounted towards an indiscernible end
256   On the bare summit of created things.
 

2.2. The Kingdom of Subtle Matter

2.2–1

 

004   He came into a magic crystal air
005   And found a life that lived not by the flesh,
006   A light that made visible immaterial things.
007   A fine degree in wonder’s hierarchy,
008   The kingdom of subtle Matter’s faery craft
009   Outlined against a sky of vivid hues,
010   Leaping out of a splendour-trance and haze,
011   The wizard revelation of its front.

2.2–2

 

034   This brilliant roof of our descending plane,
035   Intercepting the free boon of heaven’s air,
036   Admits small inrushes of a mighty breath
037   Or fragrant circuits through gold lattices;
. . .
041   And bright dews drip from the Immortal’s sky.

2.2–3

 

054   In rooms of the young divinity of power
055   And early play of the eternal Child
056   The embodiments of his outwinging thoughts
057   Laved in a bright everlasting wonder’s tints
058   And lulled by whispers of that lucid air
059   Take dream-hued rest like birds on timeless trees
060   Before they dive to float on earth-time’s sea.

2.2–4

 

115   This wonder-world with all its radiant boon
116   Of vision and inviolate happiness,
117   Only for expression cares and perfect form;
. . .
120   It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs
121   And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,
122   Invests with grace the demon and the snake.

2.2–5

 

145   A heaven of creative truths above,
146   A cosmos of harmonious dreams between,
147   A chaos of dissolving forms below,
148   It plunges lost in our inconscient base.
149   Out of its fall our denser Matter came.

2.2–6

 

163   This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
164   From her blind unwilling substance must emerge
165   A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.

2.2–7

 

348   In us too the intuitive Fire can burn;
349   An agent Light, it is coiled in our folded hearts,
350   On the celestial levels is its home:
351   Descending, it can bring those heavens here.

2.2–8

 

408   Admired for the bright finality of its lines
409   A blue horizon limited the soul;

2.2–9

 

412   Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
. . .
421   The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
422   Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
423   Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.

2.3. The Glory and the Fall of Life

2.3–1

 

046   In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes
047   She swept through the race-fields of Circumstance,
048   Or, swaying, she tossed between her heights and deeps,
049   Uplifted or broken on Time’s inconstant wheel.

2.3–2

 

104   Above him in a new celestial vault
105   Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
106   As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
107   An archipelago of laughter and fire,
108   Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.

2.3–3

 

150   In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
151   Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
152   Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
153   Illumined continents of violet peace,
154   Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
155   And griefless countries under purple suns.

2.3–4

 

378   The nude god-children in their play-fields ran
379   Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed;

2.3–5

 

464   When earth was built in the unconscious Void
465   And nothing was save a material scene,
466   Identified with sea and sky and stone
467   Her young gods yearned for the release of souls
468   Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate.

2.3–6

 

496   Life heard the call and left her native light.
497   Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane
498   On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,
499   Here too the gracious great-winged Angel poured
500   Her splendour and her swiftness and her bliss,
501   Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy.

2.3–7

 

515   But while the magic breath was on its way,
516   Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,
517   A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.

2.4. The Kingdoms of the Little Life

2.4–1

 

082   Adorer of a joy without a name,
083   In her obscure cathedral of delight
084   To dim dwarf gods she offers secret rites.
085   But vain unending is the sacrifice,
086   The priest an ignorant mage who only makes
087   Futile mutations in the altar’s plan
088   And casts blind hopes into a powerless flame.

2.4–2

 

107   Ascending slowly with unconscious steps,
108   A foundling of the Gods she wanders here
109   Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell
110   Fumbling through fog in search of Paradise.

2.4–3

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

202. As shines a solitary witness star
203. That burns apart, Light’s lonely sentinel,
204. In the drift and teeming of a mindless Night,
205. A single thinker in an aimless world
206. Awaiting some tremendous dawn of God,
207. He saw the purpose in the works of Time.

2.4–4

 

290   The phantom of a dark and evil start
291   Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do.
. . .
297   This was the first cry of the awaking world.
298   It clings around us still and clamps the god.

2.4–5

 

313   In the enigma of the darkened Vasts,
314   In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite
315   When all was plunged in the negating Void,
316   Non-Being’s night could never have been saved
317   If Being had not plunged into the dark
318   Carrying with it its triple mystic cross.

2.4–6

 

332   A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp
333   Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul,
334   A game of hide-and-seek in twilit rooms,
335   A play of love and hate and fear and hope
336   Continues in the nursery of mind
337   Its hard and heavy romp of self-born twins.

2.4–7

 

365   Huge armoured strengths shook a frail quaking ground,
366   Great puissant creatures with a dwarfish brain,
367   And pigmy tribes imposed their small life-drift.

2.4–8

 

396   Beings were there who wore a human form;
397   Absorbed they lived in the passion of the scene,
398   But knew not who they were or why they lived:
. . .
446   Ardent from the sack of happy peaceful homes
447   And gorged with slaughter, plunder, rape and fire,
448   They made of human selves their helpless prey,
449   A drove of captives led to lifelong woe,

2.4–9

 

536   At first he saw a dim obscure mind-power
537   Moving concealed by Matter and dumb life.
. . .
542   In the deep midst of an insentient world
543   Its huddled waves and foam of consciousness ran
544   Pressing and eddying through a narrow strait,
545   Carrying experience in its crowded pace.

2.4–10

 

669   A little light in a great darkness born,
670   Life knew not where it went nor whence it came.
671   Around all floated still the nescient haze.

2.5. The Godheads of the Little Life

2.5–1

 

014   He plunged his gaze into the siege of mist
. . .
018   As when a searchlight stabs the Night’s blind breast
019   And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear
020   As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,
021   All lurking things were torn out of their veils
022   And held up in his vision’s sun-white blaze.

2.5–2

 

038   Astonished by the unaccustomed glow,
039   As if immanent in the shadows started up
040   Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages,
041   Sprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small,
042   And genii fairer but unsouled and poor
043   And fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost,
044   And errant divinities trapped in Time’s dust.

2.5–3

 

156   An ocean of electric Energy
157   Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles
158   Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,
159   Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;
. . .
164   Thus has been made this real impossible world,
165   An obvious miracle or convincing show.

2.5–4

 

231   At first she raised no voice, no motion dared:
232   Charged with world-power, instinct with living force,
233   Only she clung with her roots to the safe earth,
234   Thrilled dumbly to the shocks of ray and breeze
235   And put out tendril fingers of desire;

2.5–5

 

258   Then man was moulded from the original brute.
259   A thinking mind had come to lift life’s moods,
260   The keen-edged tool of a Nature mixed and vague,
261   An intelligence half-witness, half-machine.

2.5–6

 

296   A fragile human love that could not last,
297   Ego’s moth-wings to lift the seraph soul,
298   Appeared, a surface glamour of brief date
299   Extinguished by a scanty breath of Time;
. . .
303   Hopes that soon fade to drab realities
304   And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze
305   Kindled the common earth with their brief flame.

2.5–7

 

310   A spirit that perished not with the body and breath
311   Was there like a shadow of the Unmanifest
312   And stood behind the little personal form
313   But claimed not yet this earthly embodiment.

2.5–8

 

400   A thinking puppet is the mind of life:
401   Its choice is the work of elemental strengths
402   That know not their own birth and end and cause
. . .
421   Into the actions mortals think their own
422   They bring the incoherencies of Fate,
423   Or make a doom of Time’s slipshod caprice
424   And toss the lives of men from hand to hand
425   In an inconsequent and devious game.

2.5–9

 

540   In a narrow plot he has pitched his tent of life
541   Beneath the wide gaze of the starry Vast.

2.5–10

 

624   Our seekings are short-lived experiments
625   Made by a wordless and inscrutable Power
626   Testing its issues from inconscient Night
627   To meet its luminous self of Truth and Bliss.
. . .
630   Amid the figures of the Ignorance,
631   In the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,
632   It seeks the truth to which all figures point;
633   It looks for the source of Light with vision’s lamp;

2.5–11

 

634   It works to find the Doer of all works,
635   The unfelt Self within who is the guide,
636   The unknown Self above who is the goal.

2.5–12

 

651   Across the cosmic field through narrow lanes
652   Asking a scanty dole from Fortune’s hands
653   And garbed in beggar’s robes there walks the One.

2.5–13

 

677   A door is cut in the mud wall of self;
678   Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads
679   Angels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,
680   And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream
681   The makers of the image of deity live.

2.5–14

 

721   This little being of Time, this shadow soul,
722   This living dwarf-figurehead of darkened spirit
723   Out of its traffic in petty dreams shall rise.
. . .
726   Like a clay troll kneaded into a god
727   New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,
728   It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force

2.5–15

 

740   But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve
741   Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.
. . .
746   Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,
747   Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,
748   We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,
749   Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,
750   Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray
751   And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.

2.5–16

 

754   He through the astral chaos shore a way
755   Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,
. . .
767   The watching opacity multiplied as he moved
768   Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;
769   The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.
770   Around him an extinguished phantom glow
771   Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes
772   The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.
773   His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.

2.6. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life

2.6–1

 

010   Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky
011   Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze
. . .
047   A magic flowed as if of moving scenes
048   That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy
049   Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art
050   In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush
051   On a silver background of incertitude.

2.6–2

 

087   A spirit was there that sought for its own deep self,
088   Yet was content with fragments pushed in front
089   And parts of living that belied the whole
090   But, pieced together, might one day be true.

2.6–3

 

136   An Energy of perpetual transience makes
137   The journey from which no return is sure,
138   The pilgrimage of Nature to the Unknown.
. . .
205   A world she made touched by truth’s fleeing hem,
. . .
213   It seized in imagination and confined
214   A painted bird of paradise in a cage.

2.6–4

 

278   She fashions godlike marvels out of mud;
279   In the plasm she sets her dumb immortal urge,
280   Helps the live tissue to think, the closed sense to feel,
281   Flashes through the frail nerves poignant messages,
282   In a heart of flesh miraculously loves,

2.6–5

 

299   Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;
. . .
310   Only to attract her veiled companion
311   And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak
312   Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,
313   Is her heart’s business and her clinging care.

2.6–6

 

385   In all who have risen to a greater Life,
386   A voice of unborn things whispers to the ear,
387   To their eyes visited by some high sunlight
388   Aspiration shows the image of a crown:

2.6–7

 

441   All powers of Life towards their godhead tend
. . .
453   A mastering virtue statuesques the pose,
454   Or a Titan passion goads to a proud unrest:
455   At Wisdom’s altar they are kings and priests
456   Or their life a sacrifice to an idol of Power.

2.6–8

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

559. Armed with a magical and haunted bow
560. She aimed at a target kept invisible
561. And ever deemed remote though always near.

2.6–9

 

671   A Sphinx whose eyes look up to a hidden Sun.

2.6–10

 

866   Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash,
867   Carried from birth to birth, from world to world,

2.6–11

 

960   These long far files of forward-striving hopes
961   Lift worshipping eyes to the blue Void called heaven

2.7. The Descent into Night

2.7–1

 

137   A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,
138   Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes
139   Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,
140   But hid a fatal meaning in each line
141   And could in a moment dangerously change.
142   But he alone discerned that screened attack.

2.7–2

 

179   A Power that laughed at the mischiefs of the world,
180   An irony that joined the world’s contraries
181   And flung them into each other’s arms to strive,
182   Put a sardonic rictus on God’s face.

2.7–3

 

320   Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:
321   Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,
322   The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,
323   Casting a javelin regard in front,
324   Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.

2.7–4

 

575   Haled by a serpent-force from its warm home
576   And dragged to extinction in bleak vacancy
577   Life clung to its seat with cords of gasping breath;
578   Lapped was his body by a tenebrous tongue.

2.7–5

 

608   He mastered the tides of Nature with a look:
609   He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.

2.9. The Paradise of the Life-Gods

2.9–1

 

056   A summit and core of all that marvellous world,
057   Apart stood high Elysian nameless hills,
058   Burning like sunsets in a trance of eve.
. . .
061   Their slopes through a hurry of laughter and voices sank,
062   Crossed by a throng of singing rivulets,
063   Adoring blue heaven with their happy hymn,
064   Down into woods of shadowy secrecy:

2.9–2

 

109   A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feet
110   To heights of unimagined happiness,
111   Recast his being’s aura in joy-glow,
112   His body glimmered like a skiey shell;

2.9–3

 

150   A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable
151   Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became
152   A fiery ocean of felicity;
. . .
155   The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.

2.10. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind

2.10–1

 

042   But first he met a silver-grey expanse
043   Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
. . .
104   Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
105   He came into a realm of early Light
106   And the regency of a half-risen sun.
107   Out of its rays our mind’s full orb was born.

2.10–2

 

185   Thus streamed down from the realm of early Light
186   Ethereal thinkings into Matter’s world;
187   Its gold-horned herds trooped into earth’s cave-heart.
188   Its morning rays illume our twilight’s eyes,
189   Its young formations move the mind of earth
190   To labour and to dream and new-create,
191   To feel beauty’s touch and know the world and self:
192   The Golden Child began to think and see.

2.10–3

 

207   A small keen instrument the great Puissance chose,
. . .
259   A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
260   First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
261   A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
262   A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
263   For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.
264   Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
265   It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.

2.10–4

 

330   A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
331   A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
332   A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
333   From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
334   And with its dire edge eats at being’s heart.
335   Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire.

2.10–5

 

407   Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.
. . .
412   Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
413   To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.
. . .
418   Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe,
419   She looked upon an object universe

2.10–6

 

735   Above in a high breathless stratosphere,
736   Overshadowing the dwarfish trinity,
737   Lived, aspirants to a limitless Beyond,
. . .
742   Two sun-gaze Daemons witnessing all that is.
743   A power to uplift the laggard world,
744   Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought
. . .
760   Beyond in wideness where no footing is,
. . .
763   A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act.
764   Archangel of a white transcending realm,
765   It saw the world from solitary heights
 

2.11. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

2.11–1

 

134   His privilege regained of shadowless sight
135   The Thinker entered the immortals’ air
136   And drank again his pure and mighty source.

2.11–2

 

154   In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
155   The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
156   Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.

2.11–3

 

166   A triple realm of ordered thought came first,
167   A small beginning of immense ascent:
. . .
185   The mighty wardens of the ascending stair
186   Who intercede with the all-creating Word,
187   There waited for the pilgrim heaven-bound soul;
188   Holding the thousand keys of the Beyond
189   They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind
190   And filled the life with Thought’s immensities.

2.11–4

 

212   In front of the ascending epiphany
213   World-Time’s enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss,
. . .
216   Creators of Matter by hid stress of Mind
217   Whose subtle thoughts support unconscious Life
218   And guide the fantasy of brute events,
219   Stood there, a race of young keen-visioned gods,
220   King-children born on Wisdom’s early plane,
221   Taught in her school world-making’s mystic play.

2.11–5

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

296. Above stood ranked a subtle archangel race
297. With larger lids and looks that searched the unseen.

2.11–6

 

399   In a sublimer and more daring soar
400   To the wide summit of the triple stairs
401   Bare steps climbed up like flaming rocks of gold
402   Burning their way to a pure absolute sky.

2.12. The Heavens of the Ideal

2.12–1

 

011   At each pace of the journey marvellous
012   A new degree of wonder and of bliss,
013   A new rung formed in Being’s mighty stair,
014   A great wide step trembling with jewelled fire
015   As if a burning spirit quivered there
016   Upholding with his flame the immortal hope,

2.12–2

 

024   On one side glimmered hue on floating hue,
025   A glory of sunrise breaking on the soul,
026   In a tremulous rapture of the heart’s insight
027   And the spontaneous bliss that beauty gives,
028   The lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose.

2.12–3

 

092   On the other side of the eternal stairs
093   The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame
094   Aspired to reach the Being’s absolutes.
095   Out of the sorrow and darkness of the world,
096   Out of the depths where life and thought are tombed,
097   Lonely mounts up to heaven the deathless Flame.

2.12–4

 

152   He through the Ideal’s kingdoms moved at will,
. . .
167   A glorious shining Angel of the Way
168   Presented to the seeking of the soul
169   The sweetness and the might of an idea,
170   Each deemed Truth’s intimate fount and summit force,
171   The heart of the meaning of the universe,
172   Perfection’s key, passport to Paradise.
 

2.13. In the Self of Mind

2.13–1

 

010   He stood on a wide arc of summit Space
011   Alone with an enormous Self of Mind
012   Which held all life in a corner of its vasts.

2.13–2

 

052   There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
053   His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.
054   Then suddenly a luminous finger fell
055   On all things seen or touched or heard or felt
056   And showed his mind that nothing could be known;
057   That must be reached from which all knowledge comes.
058   The sceptic Ray disrupted all that seems
059   And smote at the very roots of thought and sense.

2.13–3

 

158   A rumour and a movement and a call,
159   A foaming mass, a cry innumerable
160   Rolled ever upon the ocean surge of Life
. . .
168   A huge creator Death, a mystic Void,
169   For ever sustaining the irrational cry,
170   For ever excluding the supernal Word,
171   Motionless, refusing question and response,
172   Reposed beneath the voices and the march
173   The dim Inconscient’s dumb incertitude.

2.14. The World-Soul

2.14–1

 

002   In a far shimmering background of Mind-Space
003   A glowing mouth was seen, a luminous shaft;
004   A recluse gate it seemed, musing on joy,
005   A veiled retreat and escape to mystery.
. . .
018   As if a message from the world’s deep soul,
019   An intimation of a lurking joy
020   That flowed out from a cup of brooding bliss,
021   There shimmered stealing out into the Mind
022   A mute and quivering ecstasy of light,
023   A passion and delicacy of roseate fire.

2.14–2

 

209   Along a road of pure interior light,
210   Alone between tremendous Presences,
211   Under the watching eyes of nameless Gods,
212   His soul passed on, a single conscious power,
. . .
215   To the source of all things human and divine.
216   There he beheld in their mighty union’s poise
217   The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
218   A single being in two bodies clasped,
219   A diarchy of two united souls,
220   Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
. . .
222   Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
223   Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.

2.14–3

 

238   His spirit was made a vessel of her force;
239   Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
240   He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.

2.14–4

 

258   He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.

2.15. The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge

2.15–1

 

103   On the last step to the supernal birth
104   He trod along extinction’s narrow edge
105   Near the high verges of eternity,
106   And mounted the gold ridge of the world-dream
107   Between the slayer and the saviour fires;

2.15–2

 

120   He had reached the top of all that can be known:
. . .
134   All flowed immeasurably to one sea:
135   All living forms became its atom homes.
136   A Panergy that harmonised all life
137   Held now existence in its vast control;
138   A portion of that majesty he was made.
139   At will he lived in the unoblivious Ray.

Book Three
The Book of the Divine Mother

3.1. The Pursuit of the Unknowable

3.1–1

 

094   The universe removed its coloured veil,
095   And at the unimaginable end
096   Of the huge riddle of created things
097   Appeared the far-seen Godhead of the whole,
098   His feet firm-based on Life’s stupendous wings,
099   Omnipotent, a lonely seer of Time,
100   Inward, inscrutable, with diamond gaze.

3.2. The Adoration of the Divine Mother

3.2–1

 

015   O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
. . .
026   Only the everlasting No has neared
027   And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
028   But where is the Lover’s everlasting Yes,
029   And immortality in the secret heart,
030   The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
031   The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,

3.2–2

 

087   Abolishing the signless emptiness,
088   Breaking the vacancy and voiceless hush,
089   Piercing the limitless Unknowable,
090   Into the liberty of the motionless depths
091   A beautiful and felicitous lustre stole.
. . .
093   Imaged itself in a surprising beam
094   And built a golden passage to his heart
095   Touching through him all longing sentient things.

3.2–3

 

138   A Heart was felt in the spaces wide and bare,
139   A burning Love from white spiritual founts
140   Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths;
141   Suffering was lost in her immortal smile.

3.2–4

 

151   At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
152   In their slow rounds the cycles turn to her call;
153   Alone her hands can change Time’s dragon base.
154   Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;
155   The spirit’s alchemist energy is hers;
156   She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
157   The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
158   A power of silence in the depths of God;
159   She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
160   The magnet of our difficult ascent,
161   The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
162   The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
163   The joy that beckons from the impossible,
164   The Might of all that never yet came down.
165   All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
166   To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
167   And break the seals on the dim soul of man
168   And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.
169   All here shall be one day her sweetness’ home,
170   All contraries prepare her harmony;
171   Towards her our knowledge climbs, our passion gropes;
172   In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,
173   Her clasp will turn to ecstasy our pain.
174   Our self shall be one self with all through her.

3.2–5

 

175   In her confirmed because transformed in her,
176   Our life shall find in its fulfilled response
177   Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,
178   Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.
179   This known as in a thunder-flash of God,
180   The rapture of things eternal filled his limbs;
181   Amazement fell upon his ravished sense;
182   His spirit was caught in her intolerant flame.
183   Once seen, his heart acknowledged only her.

3.3. The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

3.3–1

 

213   The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
214   To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
215   All mind was a single harp of many strings,
216   All life a song of many meeting lives;
217   For worlds were many, but the Self was one.
218   This knowledge now was made a cosmos’ seed:
219   This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,
222   It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.

3.3–2

 

248   None was apart, none lived for himself alone,
249   Each lived for God in him and God in all,
250   Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.

3.3–3

 

300   In these new worlds projected he became
301   A portion of the universal gaze,
302   A station of the all-inhabiting light,
303   A ripple on a single sea of peace.

3.3–4

 

407   Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,
408   A mystery drama of divine delight,
. . .
413   An ardent hunt of soul looking for soul,
414   A seeking and a finding as of gods.

3.3–5

 

424   There substance was a resonant harp of self,
425   A net for the constant lightnings of the spirit,
. . .
432   Its bodies woven by a divine sense
433   Prolonged the nearness of soul’s clasp with soul;

3.3–6

 

528. All had not ceased in the unbounded hush.
529. His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone
530. Far down below him like a lamp in night;
. . .
539. In the centre of his vast and fateful trance
540. Half-way between his free and fallen selves,
541. Interceding twixt God’s day and the mortal’s night,
542. Accepting worship as its single law,
. . .
546. To her it turned for whom it willed to be.

3.4. The Vision and the Boon

3.4–1

 

007   An Influence had approached the mortal range,
008   A boundless Heart was near his longing heart,
009   A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.

3.4–2

 

028   Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed, a mighty Face
029   Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;

3.4–3

 

339   A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;

3.4–4

 

346. I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
347. Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
348. Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
349. Forerunners of a divine multitude,
350. Out of the paths of the morning star they came
351. Into the little room of mortal life.

3.4–5

 

429   “O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
430   One shall descend and break the iron Law,
431   Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power.

3.4–6

 

483   His soul drew back into the speed and noise
484   Of the vast business of created things.

Book Four
The Book of Birth and Quest

4.1. The Birth and Childhood of the Flame

4.1–1

 

020   Across the burning languor of the soil
021   Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons
022   And stamped his tyranny of torrid light
023   And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

4.1–2

 

025   Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,
026   Startled with lightnings air’s unquiet drowse,
027   Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,
028   Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark
029   The star-defended doors of heaven’s dim sleep,
030   Or from the gold eye of her paramour
031   Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth’s brown face.

4.1–3

 

068   Earth’s mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,
069   The hours went by with slow contented tread:
070   A wide and tranquil air remembered peace,
071   Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.
. . .
082   Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread
083   And scanning one by one the pregnant hours
084   Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,
085   The vigil of some mighty birth to come.

4.1–4

 

086   Autumn led in the glory of her moons
087   And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools

4.1–5

 

088   And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands
089   On Nature’s bosom still in a half sleep
090   And deepened with hues of lax and mellow ease
091   The tranquil beauty of the waning year.

4.1–6

 

092   Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
093   And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;
094   His advent was a fire of irised hues,
095   His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.

4.1–7

 

139   In this high signal moment of the gods
140   Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss,
141   A greatness from our other countries came.
. . .
149   A spirit of its celestial source aware
. . .
151   Descended into earth’s imperfect mould
152   And wept not fallen to mortality,
153   But looked on all with large and tranquil eyes.

4.1–8

 

199   Outlined by the pressure of this new descent
200   A lovelier body formed than earth had known.
201   As yet a prophecy only and a hint,
202   The glowing arc of a charmed unseen whole,
203   It came into the sky of mortal life
204   Bright like the crescent horn of a gold moon
205   Returning in a faint illumined eve.

4.1–9

 

215   But soon the link of soul with form grew sure;
216   Flooded was the dim cave with slow conscient light,
217   The seed grew into a delicate marvellous bud,
218   The bud disclosed a great and heavenly bloom.
219   At once she seemed to found a mightier race.
. . .
229   Her nature dwelt in a strong separate air
230   Like a strange bird with large rich-coloured breast
231   That sojourns on a secret fruited bough,
232   Lost in the emerald glory of the woods
233   Or flies above divine unreachable tops.

4.1–10

 

335   An image made of heaven’s transparent light.
336   Its charm recalled things seen in vision’s hours,
337   A golden bridge spanning a faery flood,
338   A moon-touched palm-tree single by a lake
339   Companion of the wide and glimmering peace,
340   A murmur as of leaves in Paradise
341   Moving when feet of the Immortals pass,
342   A fiery halo over sleeping hills,
343   A strange and starry head alone in Night.

4.2. The Growth of the Flame

4.2–1

 

001   A land of mountains and wide sun-beat plains
002   And giant rivers pacing to vast seas,
003   A field of creation and spiritual hush,
004   Silence swallowing life’s acts into the deeps,
005   Of thought’s transcendent climb and heavenward leap,
006   A brooding world of reverie and trance,
007   Filled with the mightiest works of God and man,
008   Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine
009   And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home,
010   Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.

4.2–2

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

057. Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
...
062. Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
063. Upon an inner vision’s motionless verge,
...
067. The architecture of the Infinite
068. Discovered here its inward-musing shapes
069. Captured into wide breadths of soaring stone:
070. Music brought down celestial yearnings, song
071. Held the merged heart absorbed in rapturous depths,
...
073. The world-interpreting movements of the dance
074. Moulded idea and mood to a rhythmic sway

4.2–3

 

152   A friend and yet too great wholly to know,
153   She walked in their front towards a greater light,
154   Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls,
155   One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.

4.2–4

 

205   They were moved by her towards great unknown things,
. . .
208   Some turned to her against their nature’s bent;
209   Divided between wonder and revolt,
. . .
212   Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts
213   Hugging the bonds close of which they most complained,
214   Murmured at a yoke they would have wept to lose,
215   The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love:

4.2–5

 

265   The Force in her drew earth’s subhuman broods;
266   And to her spirit’s large and free delight
267   She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
268   Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
269   They answered to her with the simple heart.

4.2–6

 

301   A key to a Light still kept in being’s cave,
302   The sun-word of an ancient mystery’s sense,
303   Her name ran murmuring on the lips of men

4.2–7

 

312   No equal heart came close to join her heart,
. . .
335   Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt,
336   Apart in herself until her hour of fate.

4.3. The Call to the Quest

4.3–1

 

001   A morn that seemed a new creation’s front,
002   Bringing a greater sunlight, happier skies,
003   Came burdened with a beauty moved and strange
004   Out of the changeless origin of things.
. . .
014   King Aswapati listened through the ray
015   To other sounds than meet the sense-formed ear.

4.3–2

 

109   The Voice withdrew into its hidden skies.
110   But like a shining answer from the gods
111   Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.

4.3–3

 

165   An impromptu from the deeper sight within,
166   Thoughts rose in him that knew not their own scope.
167   Then to those large and brooding depths whence Love
168   Regarded him across the straits of mind,
169   He spoke in sentences from the unseen Heights.

4.3–4

 

239   Accustomed scenes were now an ended play:
240   Moving in muse amid familiar powers,
241   Touched by new magnitudes and fiery signs,
242   She turned to vastnesses not yet her own;
243   Allured her heart throbbed to unknown sweetnesses;
244   The secrets of an unseen world were close.

4.3–5

 

255   When the pale dawn slipped through Night’s shadowy guard,
256   Vainly the new-born light desired her face;
257   The palace woke to its own emptiness;
258   The sovereign of its daily joys was far;
259   Her moonbeam feet tinged not the lucent floors:
260   The beauty and divinity were gone.
261   Delight had fled to search the spacious world.

4.4. The Quest

4.4–1

 

001   The world-ways opened before Savitri.
. . .
025   A guidance turned the dumb revolving wheels
026   And in the eager body of their speed
027   The dim-masked hooded godheads rode who move
028   Assigned to man immutably from his birth,
029   Receivers of the inner and outer law,
030   At once the agents of his spirit’s will
031   And witnesses and executors of his fate.

4.4–2

 

079   Often from gilded dusk to argent dawn,
080   Where jewel-lamps flickered on frescoed walls
081   And the stone lattice stared at moonlit boughs,
082   Half-conscious of the tardy listening night
083   Dimly she glided between banks of sleep
084   At rest in the slumbering palaces of kings.

4.4–3

 

085   Hamlet and village saw the fate-wain pass,
086   Homes of a life bent to the soil it ploughs
087   For sustenance of its short and passing days
088   That, transient, keep their old repeated course,
089   Unchanging in the circle of a sky
090   Which alters not above our mortal toil.

4.4–4

 

091   Away from this thinking creature’s burdened hours
092   To free and griefless spaces now she turned
. . .
094   Here was the childhood of primaeval earth,
. . .
097   Imperial acres of the eternal sower
098   And wind-stirred grass-lands winking in the sun:
099   Or mid green musing of woods and rough-browed hills,
100   In the grove’s murmurous bee-air humming wild
101   Or past the long lapsing voice of silver floods
102   Like a swift hope journeying among its dreams
103   Hastened the chariot of the golden bride.

4.4–5

 

131   The bosom of our mother kept for us still
132   Her austere regions and her musing depths,
133   Her impersonal reaches lonely and inspired
134   And the mightinesses of her rapture haunts.
. . .
147   August, exulting in her Maker’s eye,
148   She felt her nearness to him in earth’s breast,
149   Conversed still with a Light behind the veil,
150   Still communed with Eternity beyond.

4.4–6

 

190   The seers attuned to the universal Will,
191   Content in Him who smiles behind earth’s forms,
192   Abode ungrieved by the insistent days.
193   About them like green trees girdling a hill
194   Young grave disciples fashioned by their touch,
195   Trained to the simple act and conscious word,
196   Greatened within and grew to meet their heights.

4.4–7

 

259   As floats a sunbeam through a shady place,
260   The golden virgin in her carven car
261   Came gliding among meditation’s seats.
. . .
277   Awake in candid dawn or darkness mooned,
278   To the still touch inclined the daughter of Flame
279   Drank in hushed splendour between tranquil lids
280   And felt the kinship of eternal calm.

4.4–8

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

281. But morn broke in reminding her of her quest
282. And from low rustic couch or mat she rose
283. And went impelled on her unfinished way
284. And followed the fateful orbit of her life

4.4–9

 

315   Still unaccomplished was the fateful quest;
316   Still she found not the one predestined face
317   For which she sought amid the sons of men.

Book Five
The Book of Love

5.1. The Destined Meeting-Place

5.1–1

 

001   But now the destined spot and hour were close;
002   Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.
. . .
028   Pale waters ran like glimmering threads of pearl.
029   A sigh was straying among happy leaves;
030   Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet
031   Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers.
032   The white crane stood, a vivid motionless streak,
033   Peacock and parrot jewelled soil and tree,
034   The dove’s soft moan enriched the enamoured air
035   And fire-winged wild-drakes swam in silvery pools.

5.1–2

 

067   A matted forest-head invaded heaven
068   As if a blue-throated ascetic peered
069   From the stone fastness of his mountain cell
070   Regarding the brief gladness of the days;
071   His vast extended spirit couched behind.

5.2. Satyavan

5.2–1

 

034   As might a soul on Nature’s background limned
035   Stand out for a moment in a house of dream
036   Created by the ardent breath of life,
037   So he appeared against the forest verge
038   Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.
. . .
046   His look was a wide daybreak of the gods,
047   His head was a youthful Rishi’s touched with light,
048   His body was a lover’s and a king’s.

5.2–2

 

085   At first her glance that took life’s million shapes
086   Impartially to people its treasure-house
087   Along with sky and flower and hill and star,
088   Dwelt rather on the bright harmonious scene.
. . .
111   Her vision settled, caught and all was changed.
112   Her mind at first dwelt in ideal dreams,
. . .
115   And saw in him the genius of the spot,
116   A symbol figure standing mid earth’s scenes,
117   A king of life outlined in delicate air.

5.2–3

 

118   Yet this was but a moment’s reverie;
119   For suddenly her heart looked out at him,
120   The passionate seeing used thought cannot match,
121   And knew one nearer than its own close strings.
. . .
145   Hooves trampling fast, wheels largely stumbling ceased;
146   The chariot stood like an arrested wind.
147   And Satyavan looked out from his soul’s doors
148   And felt the enchantment of her liquid voice
149   Fill his youth’s purple ambience and endured
150   The haunting miracle of a perfect face.

5.2–4

 

151   Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth,
152   Drawn to soul-spaces opening round a brow,
153   He turned to the vision like a sea to the moon
154   And suffered a dream of beauty and of change,
155   Discovered the aureole round a mortal’s head,
156   Adored a new divinity in things.

5.2–5

 

164   Marvelling he came across the golden sward:
165   Gaze met close gaze and clung in sight’s embrace.

5.2–6

 

203   There is a Power within that knows beyond
204   Our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts,
205   And sometimes earth unveils that vision here.
206   To live, to love are signs of infinite things,
207   Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres.

5.3. Satyavan and Savitri

5.3–1

 

017   Thus Satyavan spoke first to Savitri:
. . .
023   How art thou named among the sons of men?
. . .
050   I have heard strange voices cross the ether’s waves,
051   The Centaur’s wizard song has thrilled my ear;
052   I have glimpsed the Apsaras bathing in the pools,
053   I have seen the wood-nymphs peering through the leaves;
054   The winds have shown to me their trampling lords,
055   I have beheld the princes of the Sun
056   Burning in thousand-pillared homes of light.
057   So now my mind could dream and my heart fear
. . .
060   Thou drov’st thy horses from the Thunderer’s worlds.

5.3–2

 

100   Musing she answered, “I am Savitri,
101   Princess of Madra. Who art thou? What name
102   Musical on earth expresses thee to men?
103   What trunk of kings watered by fortunate streams
104   Has flowered at last upon one happy branch?

5.3–3

 

112   And Satyavan replied to Savitri:
113   “In days when yet his sight looked clear on life,
114   King Dyumatsena once, the Shalwa, reigned
. . .
122   Heaven’s brilliant gods recalled their careless gifts,
123   Took from blank eyes their glad and helping ray
. . .
127   He sojourns in two solitudes, within
128   And in the solemn rustle of the woods.
129   Son of that king, I, Satyavan, have lived
130   Contented, for not yet of thee aware,
131   In my high-peopled loneliness of spirit

5.3–4

 

164   A visioned spell pursued my boyhood’s hours,
. . .
173   The neighing pride of rapid life that roams
174   Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood
175   Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer
176   Against the vesper sky became a song
177   Of evening to the silence of my soul.
178   I caught for some eternal eye the sudden
179   King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool;
180   A slow swan silvering the azure lake,
181   A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;
. . .
183   Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,
. . .
187   The brilliant long-bills in their vivid dress,
188   The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons
189   Painted my memory like a frescoed wall.

5.3–5

 

209   I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.
210   But still there lacked the last transcendent power
. . .
216   I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs
217   And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.

5.3–6

 

223   “Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,
224   Speak of thyself and all thou art within;
. . .
227   Speak till a light shall come into my heart
228   And my moved mortal mind shall understand
229   What all the deathless being in me feels.
230   It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought
231   Amidst earth’s thronging visages and forms
232   Across the golden spaces of my life.”

5.3–7

 

233   And Satyavan like a replying harp
234   To the insistent calling of a flute
235   Answered her questioning and let stream to her
236   His heart in many-coloured waves of speech:
237   “O golden princess, perfect Savitri,
. . .
309   Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?
310   Descend, O happiness, with thy moon-gold feet
311   Enrich earth’s floors upon whose sleep we lie.

5.3–8

 

327   “O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;
328   I know that thou and only thou art he.”
329   Then down she came from her high carven car
330   Descending with a soft and faltering haste;
. . .
335   Her gleaming feet upon the green-gold sward
336   Scattered a memory of wandering beams
337   And lightly pressed the unspoken desire of earth
338   Cherished in her too brief passing by the soil.

5.3–9

 

339   Then flitting like pale-brilliant moths her hands
340   Took from the sylvan verge’s sunlit arms
341   A load of their jewel-faces’ clustering swarms,
342   Companions of the spring-time and the breeze.
343   A candid garland set with simple forms
344   Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,
345   The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.

5.3–10

 

349   A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms
350   She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,
351   Then with raised hands that trembled a little now
352   At the very closeness that her soul desired,
353   This bond of sweetness, their bright union’s sign,
354   She laid on the bosom coveted by her love.

5.3–11

 

355   As if inclined before some gracious god
356   Who has out of his mist of greatness shone
357   To fill with beauty his adorer’s hours,
358   She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;
. . .
360   And made her body the room of his delight,
361   Her beating heart a remembrancer of bliss.

5.3–12

 

362. He bent to her and took into his own
363. Their married yearning joined like folded hopes;

5.3–13

 

364   As if a whole rich world suddenly possessed,
365   Wedded to all he had been, became himself,
366   An inexhaustible joy made his alone,
367   He gathered all Savitri into his clasp.

5.3–14

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

408. Then down the narrow path where their lives had met
409. He led and showed to her her future world,
410. Love’s refuge and corner of happy solitude.
...
433. Once more she mounted on the carven car
434. And under the ardour of a fiery noon
435. Less bright than the splendour of her thoughts and dreams
436. She sped swift-reined, swift-hearted but still saw
437. In still lucidities of sight’s inner world

Book Six
The Book of Fate

6.1. The Word of Fate

6.1–1

 

001   In silent bounds bordering the mortal’s plane
002   Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace
003   Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise
004   Came chanting through the large and lustrous air.

6.1–2

 

077   As darts a lightning streak, a glory fell
078   Nearing until the rapt eyes of the sage
079   Looked out from luminous cloud and, strangely limned,
080   His face, a beautiful mask of antique joy,
081   Appearing in light descended where arose
082   King Aswapati’s palace to the winds
083   In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.

6.1–3

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

084. There welcomed him the sage and thoughtful king,
085. At his side a creature beautiful, passionate, wise,
086. Aspiring like a sacrificial flame
087. Skyward from its earth-seat through luminous air,
088. Queen-browed, the human mother of Savitri.

6.1–4

 

096   He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love
097   With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,
098   Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.

6.1–5

 

107   Even as he sang and rapture stole through earth-time
108   And caught the heavens, came with a call of hooves,
109   As of her swift heart hastening, Savitri;
110   Her radiant tread glimmered across the floor.
. . .
118   She stood before her mighty father’s throne
. . .
123   He flung on her his vast immortal look;
124   His inner gaze surrounded her with its light

6.1–6

 

160   What feet of gods, what ravishing flutes of heaven
161   Have thrilled high melodies round, from near and far
162   Approaching through the soft and revelling air,
163   Which still surprised thou hearest? They have fed
164   Thy silence on some red strange-ecstasied fruit
165   And thou hast trod the dim moon-peaks of bliss.
166   Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown
167   Hastening bright-hued through the green tangled earth,
168   Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird’s call.

6.1–7

 

214   But Aswapati answered to the seer;—
280   As grows the great and golden bounteous tree
281   Flowering by Alacananda’s murmuring waves,
282   Where with enamoured speed the waters run
283   Lisping and babbling to the splendour of morn
284   And cling with lyric laughter round the knees
285   Of heaven’s daughters dripping magic rain
286   Pearl-bright from moon-gold limbs and cloudy hair,
287   So are her dawns like jewelled leaves of light,
288   So casts she her felicity on men.

6.1–8

 

325   Virgin who comest perfected by joy,
326   Reveal the name thy sudden heart-beats learned.
327   Whom hast thou chosen, kingliest among men?”
328   And Savitri answered with her still calm voice
329   As one who speaks beneath the eyes of Fate:
330   “Father and king, I have carried out thy will.
331   One whom I sought I found in distant lands;
332   I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.
. . .
339   My father, I have chosen. This is done.”

6.1–9

 

340   Astonished, all sat silent for a space.
341   Then Aswapati looked within and saw
342   A heavy shadow float above the name
343   Chased by a sudden and stupendous light;

6.1–10

 

391   But now the queen alarmed lifted her voice:
392   “O seer, thy bright arrival has been timed
393   To this high moment of a happy life;
. . .
512   Hide not from us our doom, if doom is ours.
513   This is the worst, an unknown face of Fate,
514   A terror ominous, mute, felt more than seen
515   Behind our seat by day, our couch by night,
516   A Fate lurking in the shadow of our hearts,
517   The anguish of the unseen that waits to strike.
518   To know is best, however hard to bear.”

6.1–11

 

519   Then cried the sage piercing the mother’s heart,
520   Forcing to steel the will of Savitri,
521   His words set free the spring of cosmic Fate.
. . .
531   “The truth thou hast claimed; I give to thee the truth.
586   Heaven’s greatness came, but was too great to stay.
587   Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;
588   This day returning Satyavan must die.”

6.1–12

 

590   But the queen cried: “Vain then can be heaven’s grace!
. . .
596   Mounting thy car go forth, O Savitri,
597   And travel once more through the peopled lands.
. . .
605   Plead not thy choice, for death has made it vain.
. . .
609   But Savitri answered from her violent heart,-
. . .
611   “Once my heart chose and chooses not again.
612   The word I have spoken can never be erased,
613   It is written in the record book of God.

6.1–13

 

638   “O child, in the magnificence of thy soul
639   Dwelling on the border of a greater world
640   And dazzled by thy superhuman thoughts,
641   Thou lendst eternity to a mortal hope.
. . .
680   Thou who art human, think not like a god.
681   For man, below the god, above the brute,
682   Is given the calm reason as his guide;
. . .
698   Leave not thy goal to follow a beautiful face.

6.1–14

 

718   But Savitri replied with steadfast eyes:
. . .
748   If for a year, that year is all my life.
749   And yet I know this is not all my fate
750   Only to live and love awhile and die.
751   For I know now why my spirit came on earth
752   And who I am and who he is I love.
753   I have looked at him from my immortal Self,
754   I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;
755   I have seen the Eternal in a human face.”

6.2. The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain

6.2–1

 

190   Then after a silence Narad made reply:
191   Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,
. . .
273   Implacable in the passion of their will,
274   Lifting the hammers of titanic toil
275   The demiurges of the universe work;
276   They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons
277   Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.

6.2–2

 

298   The Eternal suffers in a human form,
299   He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:
300   He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
. . .
329   How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
. . .
335   He carries the suffering world in his own breast;

6.2–3

 

400   “Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
. . .
489   He must enter the eternity of Night
490   And know God’s darkness as he knows his Sun.
491   For this he must go down into the pit,
492   For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.
493   Imperishable and wise and infinite,
494   He still must travel Hell the world to save.

6.2–4

 

527   Haste not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,
528   Open not thy doorways to a nameless Power,
529   Climb not to Godhead by the Titan’s road.
530   Against the Law he pits his single will,
531   Across its way he throws his pride of might.
532   Heavenward he clambers on a stair of storms
533   Aspiring to live near the deathless sun.

6.2–5

 

603   Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.
604   Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives,
. . .
613   Indifference, pain and joy, a triple disguise,
614   Attire of the rapturous Dancer in the ways,
615   Withhold from thee the body of God’s bliss.

6.2–6

 

620   “O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
. . .
623   Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
624   Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
625   In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
626   The soul looked out from its felicity.
. . .
630   Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
631   It strained towards some otherness of self,
632   It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
. . .
653   As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
654   The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:

6.2–7

 

677   A huge descent began, a giant fall:
678   For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
679   And what the soul imagines is made a world.

6.2–8

 

689   Then Aswapati answered to the seer:
. . .
694   I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;
695   Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate?”
696   But Narad answered covering truth with truth:
. . .
856   A day may come when she must stand unhelped
857   On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers,
858   Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
859   Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
860   To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge,

6.2–9

 

898   He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.
899   Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,
900   He turned towards his far-off blissful home.
901   A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,
902   The luminous body of the ethereal seer
903   Assailed the purple glory of the noon
904   And disappeared like a receding star
905   Vanishing into the light of the Unseen.

Book Seven
The Book of Yoga

7.1. The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief and Pain

7.1–1

 

021   Once more she sat behind loud hastening hooves;
022   A speed of armoured squadrons and a voice
023   Far-heard of chariots bore her from her home.
024   A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse
025   Looked up at her from a vast indolence:

7.1–2

 

074   Arrived in that rough-hewn homestead they gave,
075   Questioning no more the strangeness of her fate,
076   Their pride and loved one to the great blind king,
077   A regal pillar of fallen mightiness
078   And the stately care-worn woman once a queen
079   Who now hoped nothing for herself from life,
080   But all things only hoped for her one child,
. . .
094   They parted from her with pain-fraught burdened hearts
. . .
098   Helpless against the choice of Savitri’s heart
099   They left her to her rapture and her doom

7.1–3

 

201   A worshipped empress all once vied to serve,
202   She made herself the diligent serf of all,
203   Nor spared the labour of broom and jar and well,
204   Or close gentle tending or to heap the fire
205   Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed
206   To others that her woman’s strength might do.

7.1–4

 

253   But Satyavan sometimes half understood,
. . .
256   The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.
. . .
288   Yet ever they grew into each other more
289   Until it seemed no power could rend apart,
290   Since even the body’s walls could not divide.
291   For when he wandered in the forest, oft
292   Her conscious spirit walked with him and knew
293   His actions as if in herself he moved;
294   He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.

7.2. The Parable of the Search for the Soul

7.2–1

 

008   Above her brows where will and knowledge meet
009   A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.
. . .
015   As the Voice touched, her body became a stark
016   And rigid golden statue of motionless trance,
017   A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.
. . .
019   Her heart listened to its slow measured beats,
. . .
021   “Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,
. . .
024   O spirit, O immortal energy,
025   If ’twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart
026   Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?
027   Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.”

7.2–2

 

028   But Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night:
. . .
045   Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws
046   Or stave off death’s inevitable hour?
047   This surely is best to pactise with my fate
048   And follow close behind my lover’s steps
049   And pass through night from twilight to the sun
050   Across the tenebrous river that divides
051   The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.
. . .
056   The Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit?
057   And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows
058   The work was left undone for which it came?

7.2–3

 

076   Then Savitri’s heart fell mute, it spoke no word.
. . .
081   A Power within her answered the still Voice:
082   “I am thy portion here charged with thy work,
083   As thou myself seated for ever above,
084   Speak to my depths, O great and deathless Voice,
085   Command, for I am here to do thy will.”

7.2–4

 

086   The Voice replied: “Remember why thou cam’st:
087   Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,
. . .
095   In the enormous emptiness of thy mind
096   Thou shalt see the Eternal’s body in the world,
097   Know him in every voice heard by thy soul,
. . .
103   Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.”
104   Then Savitri by her doomed husband sat,
105   Still rigid in her golden motionless pose,
106   A statue of the fire of the inner sun.
. . .
112   She looked into herself and sought for her soul.

7.3. The Entry into the Inner Countries

7.3–1

 

031   Then Savitri surged out of her body’s wall
032   And stood a little span outside herself
. . .
036   At the dim portal of the inner life
. . .
043   A formidable voice cried from within:
044   “Back, creature of earth, lest tortured and torn thou die.”
. . .
046   The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,
. . .
049   And trolls and gnomes and goblins scowled and stared
050   And wild beast roarings thrilled the blood with fear
051   And menace muttered in a dangerous tongue.
052   Unshaken her will pressed on the rigid bars:
. . .
055   Her being entered into the inner worlds.

7.3–2

 

064   Across a perilous border line she passed
065   Where Life dips into the subconscient dusk
066   Or struggles from Matter into chaos of mind,
067   Aswarm with elemental entities
068   And fluttering shapes of vague half-bodied thought
069   And crude beginnings of incontinent force.
. . .
114   This state now threatened, this she pushed from her.

7.3–3

 

130   Approaching loomed a giant head of Life
131   Ungoverned by mind or soul, subconscient, vast.

7.3–4

 

256   Then journeying forward through the self’s wide hush
257   She came into a brilliant ordered Space.
258   There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;
259   A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.
. . .
371   There one stood forth who bore authority
372   On an important brow and held a rod;
. . .
375   His sentences savoured the oracle.
376   “Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world,
. . .
379   O aspirant to the perfect way of life,
380   Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.

7.3–5

 

397   Savitri replied casting into his world
398   Sight’s deep release, the heart’s questioning inner voice:
. . .
401   “Happy are they who in this chaos of things,
402   This coming and going of the feet of Time,
403   Can find the single Truth, the eternal Law:
. . .
409   Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock.
410   But I must pass leaving the ended search,
411   Truth’s rounded outcome firm, immutable
412   And this harmonic building of world-fact,
413   This ordered knowledge of apparent things.
414   Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.”

7.3–6

 

415   None answered in that bright contented world,
. . .
419   But some murmured, passers-by from kindred spheres:
420   Each by his credo judged the thought she spoke.
421   “Who then is this who knows not that the soul
422   Is a least gland or a secretion’s fault
. . .
429   But others, “Nay, it is her spirit she seeks.
. . .
433   But none has touched its limbs or seen its face.
. . .
440   Another with mystic and unsatisfied eyes
441   Who loved his slain belief and mourned its death,
442   “Is there one left who seeks for a Beyond?
443   Can still the path be found, opened the gate?”

7.3–7

 

444   So she fared on across her silent self.
445   To a road she came thronged with an ardent crowd
. . .
451   Guests from the cavern of the secret soul.
. . .
461   And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd,
. . .
463   Longed once to hasten like them to save God’s world;
. . .
471   Outstretching her hands to stay the throng she cried:
472   “O happy company of luminous gods,
473   Reveal, who know, the road that I must tread,-
. . .
475   To find the birthplace of the occult Fire
476   And the deep mansion of my secret soul.”

7.3–8

 

477   One answered pointing to a silence dim
478   On a remote extremity of sleep
479   In some far background of the inner world.
480   “O Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come.
. . .
491   Follow the world’s winding highway to its source.
492   There in the silence few have ever reached,
493   Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone
494   And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.”

7.3–9

 

495   Then Savitri following the great winding road
496   Came where it dwindled into a narrow path
497   Trod only by rare wounded pilgrim feet.
498   A few bright forms emerged from unknown depths
499   And looked at her with calm immortal eyes.
500   There was no sound to break the brooding hush;
501   One felt the silent nearness of the soul.

7.4. The Triple Soul-Forces

7.4–1

 

001   Here from a low and prone and listless ground
002   The passion of the first ascent began;
. . .
004   A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe.
. . .
016   The Mother of the seven sorrows bore
017   The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:
. . .
025   In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke:
026   “O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
027   To share the suffering of the world I came,
028   I draw my children’s pangs into my breast.
. . .
087   I am the hope that looks towards my God,
088   My God who never came to me till now;
089   His voice I hear that ever says `I come’:
090   I know that one day he shall come at last.”

7.4–2

 

091   She ceased, and like an echo from below
092   Answering her pathos of divine complaint
093   A voice of wrath took up the dire refrain,
. . .
097   “I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
098   Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
099   To enjoy my agony God built the earth,
100   My passion he has made his drama’s theme.
. . .
153   I am the doer of demoniac deeds;
154   I was made for evil, evil is my lot;
. . .
157   What Nature made me, that I must remain.

7.4–3

 

159   And Savitri heard the voice, the echo heard
160   And turning to her being of pity spoke:
161   “Madonna of suffering, Mother of grief divine,
162   Thou art a portion of my soul put forth
163   To bear the unbearable sorrow of the world.
. . .
167   But thine is the power to solace, not to save.
168   One day I will return, a bringer of strength,
169   And make thee drink from the Eternal’s cup;

7.4–4

 

178   On passed she in her spirit’s upward route.
. . .
184   A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
185   Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
186   Her feet upon a couchant lion’s back.

7.4–5

 

212   Aspired the harmony of her puissant voice:
213   “O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
. . .
236   I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,
237   And Lakshmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;
238   I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
239   I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.
. . .
276   I shall hear the silver swing of heaven’s gates
277   When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.”

7.4–6

 

278   She spoke and from the lower human world
279   An answer, a warped echo met her speech;
. . .
305   The voice rose up and smote some inner sun.
306   “I am the heir of the forces of the earth,
307   Slowly I make good my right to my estate;
. . .
381   When earth is mastered, I shall conquer heaven;
382   The gods shall be my aides or menial folk,
383   No wish I harbour unfulfilled shall die:
384   Omnipotence and omniscience shall be mine.”

7.4–7

 

385   And Savitri heard the voice, the warped echo heard
386   And turning to her being of power she spoke:
387   “Madonna of might, Mother of works and force,
388   Thou art a portion of my soul put forth
. . .
396   Thou hast given men strength, wisdom thou couldst not give.
397   One day I will return, a bringer of light;
398   Then will I give to thee the mirror of God;
399   Thou shalt see self and world as by him they are seen
400   Reflected in the bright pool of thy soul.

7.4–8

 

407   Ascending still her spirit’s upward route
408   She came into a high and happy space,
. . .
419   Here, living centre of that vision of peace,
420   A Woman sat in clear and crystal light:
. . .
425   A low music heard became her floating voice:
426   “O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
427   I have come down to the wounded desolate earth
428   To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest
. . .
491   I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.

7.4–9

 

495   She spoke and from the ignorant nether plane
496   A cry, a warped echo naked and shuddering came.
. . .
536   “I am the mind of God’s great ignorant world
537   Ascending to knowledge by the steps he made;
. . .
575   If God is at work, his secrets I have found.
576   But still the Cause of things is left in doubt,
. . .
580   I know not and perhaps shall never know.
. . .
616   Human I am, human let me remain
617   Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.

7.4–10

 

625   And Savitri heard the voice, the warped answer heard
626   And turning to her being of light she spoke:
627   “Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace,
628   Thou art a portion of my self put forth
629   To raise the spirit to its forgotten heights
630   And wake the soul by touches of the heavens.
. . .
639   Even if thou rain down intuition’s rays,
640   The mind of man will think it earth’s own gleam,
. . .
644   His hunger for the eternal thou must nurse
. . .
646   And bring God down into his body and life.
647   One day I will return, His hand in mine,
648   And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.

7.5. The Finding of the Soul

7.5–1

 

001   Onward she passed seeking the soul’s mystic cave.
002   At first she stepped into a night of God.
. . .
046   The face of Dawn out of mooned twilight grew.
047   Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy
048   Into the worshipping silence of her world;
049   He carried immortal lustre as his robe,
050   Trailed heaven like a purple scarf and wore
051   As his vermilion caste-mark a red sun.

7.5–2

 

067   An awful dimness wrapped the great rock-doors
068   Carved in the massive stone of Matter’s trance.
069   Two golden serpents round the lintel curled,
070   Enveloping it with their pure and dreadful strength,
071   Looked out with wisdom’s deep and luminous eyes.
072   An eagle covered it with wide conquering wings:
073   Flames of self-lost immobile reverie,
074   Doves crowded the grey musing cornices
075   Like sculptured postures of white-bosomed peace.

7.5–3

 

076   Across the threshold’s sleep she entered in
077   And found herself amid great figures of gods
078   Conscious in stone and living without breath,
079   Watching with fixed regard the soul of man,
080   Executive figures of the cosmic self,
081   World-symbols of immutable potency.

7.5–4

 

102   There was no step of breathing men, no sound,
103   Only the living nearness of the soul.
. . .
115   As thus she passed in that mysterious place
116   Through room and room, through door and rock-hewn door,
117   She felt herself made one with all she saw.
118   A sealed identity within her woke;
119   She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
120   These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
. . .
127   The Adorer and Adored self-lost and one.

7.5–5

 

128   In the last chamber on a golden seat
129   One sat whose shape no vision could define;
130   Only one felt the world’s unattainable fount,
131   A Power of which she was a straying Force,
132   An invisible Beauty, goal of the world’s desire,
133   A Sun of which all knowledge is a beam,
134   A Greatness without whom no life could be.

7.5–6

 

135   Thence all departed into silent self,
136   And all became formless and pure and bare.
137   Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock
138   She came out where there shone a deathless sun.
139   A house was there all made of flame and light
140   And crossing a wall of doorless living fire
141   There suddenly she met her secret soul.

7.5–7

 

142   A being stood immortal in transience,
143   Deathless dallying with momentary things,
. . .
155   She had come into the mortal body’s room
. . .
165   But since she knows the toil of mind and life
166   As a mother feels and shares her children’s lives,
167   She puts forth a small portion of herself,
168   A being no bigger than the thumb of man
169   Into a hidden region of the heart
170   To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
171   To share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds
172   And labour mid the labour of the stars.

7.5–8

 

196   Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
197   They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
198   The secret deity and its human part,
199   The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
200   Then with a magic transformation’s speed
201   They rushed into each other and grew one.

7.5–9

 

202   Once more she was human upon earthly soil
203   In the muttering night amid the rain-swept woods
204   And the rude cottage where she sat in trance:
. . .
207   But now the half-opened lotus bud of her heart
208   Had bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray;
209   In an image shone revealed her secret soul.
. . .
212   In its deep lotus home her being sat
213   As if on concentration’s marble seat,
214   Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds
215   To make this earthly tenement her house.

7.5–10

 

216   As in a flash from a supernal light,
217   A living image of the original Power,
218   A face, a form came down into her heart
219   And made of it its temple and pure abode.
. . .
223   Out of the Inconscient’s soulless mindless night
224   A flaming Serpent rose released from sleep.
225   It rose billowing its coils and stood erect
226   And climbing mightily, stormily on its way
227   It touched her centres with its flaming mouth;
228   As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,
229   They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss.
230   Then at the crown it joined the Eternal’s space.

7.5–11

 

247   All underwent a high celestial change:
248   Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall,
. . .
251   Each part of the being trembling with delight
252   Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness
. . .
255   In the country of the lotus of the head
. . .
257   In the castle of the lotus twixt the brows
. . .
259   In the passage of the lotus of the throat
. . .
278   In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart
. . .
282   In the navel lotus’ broad imperial range
. . .
286   In the narrow nether centre’s petty parts
. . .
290   In the deep place where once the Serpent slept,
. . .
293   A firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might.

7.6. Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute

7.6–1

 

035   Above the cherished head of Satyavan
036   She saw not now Fate’s dark and lethal orb;
037   A golden circle round a mystic sun
038   Disclosed to her new-born predicting sight
039   The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life.

7.6–2

 

065   Once as she sat in deep felicitous muse,
. . .
068   An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.
. . .
074   A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings
075   Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,
076   A denser darkness than the Night could bear,
077   Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.

7.6–3

 

141   Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,
142   The Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,
143   The voice of Light after the voice of Night:
. . .
146   “O soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;
. . .
159   That all in thee may reach its absolute.
. . .
184   God must be born on earth and be as man
185   That man being human may grow even as God.
. . .
219   Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.
220   Annul thyself that only God may be.”

7.6–4

 

221   Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,
222   And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused
223   Plunging her deep regard into herself
224   In her soul’s privacy in the silent Night.

7.6–5

 

289   Her body’s thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs
290   And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown
291   Where Nature’s murmurs meet the Ineffable.

7.6–6

 

405   Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell
406   Like quiet waves upon a silent sea
407   Or ripples passing over a lonely pool
408   When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.

7.6–7

 

458   Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:
459   Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary
460   A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.

7.6–8

 

607   Unutterably effaced, no one and null,
608   A vanishing vestige like a violet trace,
609   A faint record merely of a self now past,
610   She was a point in the unknowable.

7.7. The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness

7.7–1

 

059   Yet all was not extinct in this deep loss;
060   The being travelled not towards nothingness.
061   There was some high surpassing Secrecy,
062   And when she sat alone with Satyavan,
063   Her moveless mind with his that searched and strove,
064   In the hush of the profound and intimate night
065   She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth
066   Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart
067   Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought,-

7.7–2

 

127   But now she sat by sleeping Satyavan,
128   Awake within, and the enormous Night
129   Surrounded her with the Unknowable’s vast.

7.7–3

 

210   Out of the infinitudes all came to her,
211   Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
212   Infinity was her own natural home.
213   Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
214   The distant constellations wheeled round her;
215   Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,
216   The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
217   All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
218   Its movements were large copies of her own.
219   She was the single self of all these selves,
220   She was in them and they were all in her.

Book Eight
The Book of Death

8.3. Death in the Forest

8.3–1

 

012   Then silently she rose and, service done,
013   Bowed down to the great goddess simply carved
014   By Satyavan upon a forest stone.
015   What prayer she breathed her soul and Durga knew.
016   Perhaps she felt in the dim forest huge
017   The infinite Mother watching over her child,
018   Perhaps the shrouded Voice spoke some still word.

8.3–2

 

019   At last she came to the pale mother queen.
020   She spoke but with guarded lips and tranquil face
. . .
027   And forced upon her speech an outward peace.
028   “One year that I have lived with Satyavan
. . .
032   I have not gone into the silences
033   Of this great woodland that enringed my thoughts
. . .
036   Now has a strong desire seized all my heart
037   To go with Satyavan holding his hand
. . .
043   Release me now and let my heart have rest.”
044   She answered: “Do as thy wise mind desires,
045   O calm child-sovereign with the eyes that rule.

8.3–3

 

051   Then the doomed husband and the woman who knew
052   Went with linked hands into that solemn world
053   Where beauty and grandeur and unspoken dream,
054   Where Nature’s mystic silence could be felt
055   Communing with the secrecy of God.

8.3–4

 

083   But Satyavan had paused. He meant to finish
084   His labour here that happy, linked, uncaring
085   They two might wander free in the green deep
086   Primaeval mystery of the forest’s heart.
. . .
092   Wordless but near she watched, no turn to lose
093   Of the bright face and body which she loved.
. . .
098   But Satyavan wielded a joyous axe.
099   He sang high snatches of a sage’s chant

8.3–5

 

105   But as he worked, his doom upon him came.
. . .
114  . . . Now the great woodsman
115   Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting
116   His arm he flung away the poignant axe
117   Far from him like an instrument of pain.
118   She came to him in silent anguish and clasped,
119   And he cried to her, “Savitri, a pang
120   Cleaves through my head and breast as if the axe
121   Were piercing it and not the living branch.

8.3–6

 

127   Then Savitri sat under branches wide,
. . .
131   She guarded him in her bosom and strove to soothe
132   His anguished brow and body with her hands.
. . .
144   He cried out in a clinging last despair,
145   “Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,
146   Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die.”

8.3–7

 

147   And even as her pallid lips pressed his,
148   His failed, losing last sweetness of response;
149   His cheek pressed down her golden arm. She sought
150   His mouth still with her living mouth, as if
151   She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;
152   Then grew aware they were no more alone.
153   Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.
. . .
176   She knew that visible Death was standing there
177   And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.

Book Nine
The Book of Eternal Night

9.1. Towards the Black Void

9.1–1

 

016   Then suddenly there came on her the change
017   Which in tremendous moments of our lives
018   Can overtake sometimes the human soul
019   And hold it up towards its luminous source.
020   The veil is torn, the thinker is no more:
021   Only the spirit sees and all is known.
022   Then a calm Power seated above our brows
023   Is seen, unshaken by our thoughts and deeds,
024   Its stillness bears the voices of the world:
025   Immobile, it moves Nature, looks on life.
. . .
047   This in a moment’s depths was born in her.

9.1–2

 

054   Like one who looks up to far heights she saw,
055   Ancient and strong as on a windless summit
056   Above her where she had worked in her lone mind
057   Labouring apart in a sole tower of self,
058   The source of all which she had seemed or wrought,
. . .
073   That mightiness assumed a symbol form:
074   Her being’s spaces quivered with its touch,
075   It covered her as with immortal wings;

9.1–3

 

084   All in her mated with that mighty hour,
085   As if the last remnant had been slain by Death
086   Of the humanity that once was hers.
. . .
107   A moment yet she lingered motionless
108   And looked down on the dead man at her feet;

9.1–4

 

109   Then like a tree recovering from a wind
110   She raised her noble head; fronting her gaze
111   Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand,
112   A limitless denial of all being
113   That wore the terror and wonder of a shape.

9.1–5

 

130   The two opposed each other with their eyes,
131   Woman and universal god: around her,
132   Piling their void unbearable loneliness
133   Upon her mighty uncompanioned soul,
134   Many inhuman solitudes came close.

9.1–6

 

179   The dim and awful godhead rose erect
180   From his brief stooping to his touch on earth,
181   And, like a dream that wakes out of a dream,
182   Forsaking the poor mould of that dead clay,
183   Another luminous Satyavan arose,
184   Starting upright from the recumbent earth
185   As if someone over viewless borders stepped
186   Emerging on the edge of unseen worlds.

9.1–7

 

202   Between two realms he stood, not wavering,
203   But fixed in quiet strong expectancy,
204   Like one who, sightless, listens for a command.
205   So were they immobile on that earthly field,
206   Powers not of earth, though one in human clay.
. . .
212   Luminous he moved away; behind him Death

9.1–8

 

261   Into a deep and unfamiliar air
262   Enormous, windless, without stir or sound
263   They seemed to enlarge away, drawn by some wide
264   Pale distance, from the warm control of earth
265   And her grown far: now, now they would escape.
266   Then flaming from her body’s nest alarmed
267   Her violent spirit soared at Satyavan.

9.1–9

 

321   Enigma of the Inconscient’s sculptural sleep,
322   Symbols of the approach to darkness old
323   And monuments of her titanic reign,

9.1–10

 

331   Then, to that chill sere heavy line arrived
332   Where his feet touched the shadowy marches’ brink,
333   Turning arrested luminous Satyavan
334   Looked back with his wonderful eyes at Savitri.
335   But Death pealed forth his vast abysmal cry:
336   “O mortal, turn back to thy transient kind;
337   Aspire not to accompany Death to his home,
338   As if thy breath could live where Time must die.

9.1–11

 

369   Still like a statue on its pedestal,
370   Lone in the silence and to vastness bared,
371   Against midnight’s dumb abysses piled in front
372   A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.

9.2. The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness

9.2–1

 

016   The Woman first affronted the Abyss
017   Daring to journey through the eternal Night.
018   Armoured with light she advanced her foot to plunge
019   Into the dread and hueless vacancy;

9.2–2

 

132   Once more she heard the treading of a god,
133   And out of the dumb darkness Satyavan,
134   Her husband, grew into a luminous shade.
. . .
138   Death missioned to the night his lethal call.
139   “This is my silent dark immensity,
. . .
142   Entombing the vanity of life’s desires.
143   Hast thou beheld thy source, O transient heart,
144   And known from what the dream thou art was made?

9.2–3

 

222   At last she spoke; her voice was heard by Night:
223   “I bow not to thee, O huge mask of death,
224   Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,
. . .
227   Conscious of immortality I walk.
. . .
247   First I demand whatever Satyavan,
248   My husband, waking in the forest’s charm
249   Out of his long pure childhood’s lonely dreams,
250   Desired and had not for his beautiful life.
251   Give, if thou must, or, if thou canst, refuse.”

9.2–4

 

252   Death bowed his head in scornful cold assent,
. . .
255   Uplifting his disastrous voice he spoke:
. . .
257   I yield to his blind father’s longing heart
258   Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost
259   And royal trappings for his peaceful age,
260   The pallid pomps of man’s declining days,
261   The silvered decadent glories of life’s fall.

9.2–5

 

275   But Savitri answered the disdainful Shade:
276   “World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.
. . .
278   I am immortal in my mortality.
279   I tremble not before the immobile gaze
280   Of the unchanging marble hierarchies
281   That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.
282   My soul can meet them with its living fire.
. . .
296   Wherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue.”

9.2–6

 

308   Against the Woman’s boundless heart arose
309   The almighty cry of universal Death.
310   “Hast thou god-wings or feet that tread my stars,
311   Frail creature with the courage that aspires,
312   Forgetting thy bounds of thought, thy mortal role?
. . .
340   I will take from thee the black eternal grip:
341   Clasping in thy heart thy fate’s exiguous dole
342   Depart in peace, if peace for man is just.”

9.2–7

 

343   But Savitri answered meeting scorn with scorn,
344   The mortal woman to the dreadful Lord:
345   “Who is this God imagined by thy night,
346   Contemptuously creating worlds disdained,
347   Who made for vanity the brilliant stars?
348   Not he who has reared his temple in my thoughts
349   And made his sacred floor my human heart.
350   My God is will and triumphs in his paths,
351   My God is love and sweetly suffers all.
. . .
360   Love’s golden wings have power to fan thy void:
361   The eyes of love gaze starlike through death’s night,
362   The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds.

9.2–8

 

371   Once more a Thought, a Word in the void arose
372   And Death made answer to the human soul:
. . .
384   Wilt thou claim immortality, O heart,
385   Crying against the eternal witnesses
386   That thou and he are endless powers and last?
387   Death only lasts and the inconscient Void.
. . .
394   All from my depths are born, they live by death;
395   All to my depths return and are no more.
. . .
403   I, Death, am the one refuge of thy soul.

9.2–9

 

439   But Savitri replied to the dread Voice:
440   “O Death, who reasonest, I reason not,
441   Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build
442   Or builds in vain because she doubts her work.
443   I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.”
444   Death answered her, one deep surrounding cry:
445   “Know also. Knowing, thou shalt cease to love
. . .
449   But Savitri replied for man to Death:
450   “When I have loved for ever, I shall know.
451   Love in me knows the truth all changings mask.

9.2–10

 

466   Like one disdaining violent helpless words
467   From victim lips Death answered not again.
468   He stood in silence and in darkness wrapped,
. . .
471   Half-seen in clouds appeared a sombre face;
472   Night’s dusk tiara was his matted hair,
473   The ashes of the pyre his forehead’s sign.

9.2–11

 

477   Around her rolled the shuddering waste of gloom,
478   Its swallowing emptiness and joyless death
479   Resentful of her thought and life and love.
480   Through the long fading night by her compelled,
481   Gliding half-seen on their unearthly path,
482   Phantasmal in the dimness moved the three.

Book Ten
The Book of the Double Twilight

10.1. The Dream Twilight of the Ideal

10.1–1

 

071   Night is not our beginning nor our end;
072   She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid
073   Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain.

10.1–2

 

086   Assailed in the sovereign emptiness of its reign
087   The intolerant Darkness paled and drew apart
088   Till only a few black remnants stained that Ray.
089   But on a failing edge of dumb lost space
090   Still a great dragon body sullenly loomed;
091   Adversary of the slow struggling Dawn
092   Defending its ground of tortured mystery,
093   It trailed its coils through the dead martyred air
094   And curving fled down a grey slope of Time.

10.1–3

 

095   There is a morning twilight of the gods;
096   Miraculous from sleep their forms arise
097   And God’s long nights are justified by dawn.
. . .
109   Into a happy misty twilit world
110   Where all ran after light and joy and love
111   She slipped; there far-off raptures drew more close

10.1–4

 

252   Above, her spirit in its mighty trance
253   Saw all, but lived for its transcendent task,
254   Immutable like a fixed eternal star

10.2. The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal

10.2–1

 

001   Then pealed the calm inexorable voice:
. . .
011   This is the world from which thy yearnings came.

10.3. The Debate of Love and Death

10.3–1

 

004   But Savitri answered to almighty Death:
. . .
432   “O Death, I have triumphed over thee within;
. . .
443   O Death, not for my heart’s sweet poignancy
444   Nor for my happy body’s bliss alone
445   I have claimed from thee the living Satyavan,
446   But for his work and mine, our sacred charge.
447   Our lives are God’s messengers beneath the stars;
448   To dwell under death’s shadow they have come
449   Tempting God’s light to earth for the ignorant race,

10.3–2

 

462   But to the woman Death the god replied,
. . .
480   O human face, put off mind-painted masks:
481   The animal be, the worm that Nature meant;
482   Accept thy futile birth, thy narrow life.
. . .
523   But Savitri replied to mighty Death:
524   “My heart is wiser than the Reason’s thoughts,
525   My heart is stronger than thy bonds, O Death.
526   It sees and feels the one Heart beat in all,
527   It feels the high Transcendent’s sunlike hands,

10.3–3

 

567   Death bowed his sovereign head in cold assent:
568   “I give to thee, saved from death and poignant fate
569   Whatever once the living Satyavan
570   Desired in his heart for Savitri.
. . .
582   Return, O child, to thy forsaken earth.”
583   But Savitri replied, “Thy gifts resist.
584   Earth cannot flower if lonely I return.”

10.3–4

 

585   Then Death sent forth once more his angry cry,
. . .
587   “What knowst thou of earth’s rich and changing life
588   Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease?
. . .
597   But Savitri replied to the vague god,
598   “Give me back Satyavan, my only lord.
599   Thy thoughts are vacant to my soul that feels
600   The deep eternal truth in transient things.”
. . .
645   Thus with armed speech the great opponents strove.

10.3–5

 

674   The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
675   And she behind was leader of their march
676   And they in front were followers of her will.
. . .
 

685   Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,
686   In the dark front of Death, a failing star.
687   Above was the unseen balance of his fate.

10.4. The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real

10.4–1

 

083   Once more arose the great destroying Voice:
. . .
087   “Behold the figures of this symbol realm,
088   Its solid outlines of creative dream
089   Inspiring the great concrete tasks of earth.
. . .
096   Where Nature changes not, man cannot change:
. . .
121   Hope not to call God down into his life.
122   How shalt thou bring the Everlasting here?
123   There is no house for him in hurrying Time.

10.4–2

 

234   But Savitri answered to the sophist God:
. . .
290   If the chamber’s door is even a little ajar,
291   What then can hinder God from stealing in
292   Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping soul?
293   Already God is near, the Truth is close:
. . .
305   A lonely freedom cannot satisfy
306   A heart that has grown one with every heart:
307   I am a deputy of the aspiring world,
308   My spirit’s liberty I ask for all.”

10.4–3

 

309   Then rang again a deeper cry of Death.
. . .
378   Mighty art thou with the dread goddess filled,
379   To whom thou criedst at dawn in the dim woods.
380   Use not thy strength like the wild Titan souls!
381   Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,
382   Respect the calm of great established things.”
383   But Savitri replied to the huge god:
384   “What is the calm thou vauntst, O Law, O Death?
. . .
401   I trample on thy law with living feet;
402   For to arise in freedom I was born.

10.4–4

 

408   . . . Death replied to her,
409   “Why should the noble and immortal will
410   Stoop to the petty works of transient earth,
411   Freedom forgotten and the Eternal’s path?
. . .
424   She answered, “Straight I trample on the road
425   The strong hand hewed for me which planned our paths.
. . .
446   Freedom is this with ever seated soul,
447   Large in life’s limits, strong in Matter’s knots,
448   Building great stuff of action from the worlds
449   To make fine wisdom from coarse, scattered strands
450   And love and beauty out of war and night,
451   The wager wonderful, the game divine.

10.4–5

 

461   Immutable, Death’s denial met her cry:
. . .
496   All things hang here between God’s yes and no,
497   Two Powers real but to each other untrue,
498   Two consort stars in the mooned night of mind
499   That towards two opposite horizons gaze,
500   The white head and black tail of the mystic drake,
501   The swift and the lame foot, wing strong, wing broken
502   Sustaining the body of the uncertain world,
503   A great surreal dragon in the skies.

10.4–6

 

539   The Woman answered to the mighty Shade,
540   And as she spoke, mortality disappeared;
541   Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes,
542   Light came, a dream of heaven, into her face.

10.4–7

 

666   On summit Mind are radiant altitudes
667   Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,
668   Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,
. . .
671   A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;
672   Its smallest parts are here philosophies
673   Challenging with their detailed immensity,

10.4–8

 

675   But higher still can climb the ascending light;
676   There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,
677   Oceans of an immortal luminousness,
678   Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,

10.4–9

 

684   A highest flight climbs to a deepest view:
685   In a wide opening of its native sky
686   Intuition’s lightnings range in a bright pack
687   Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,
. . .
695   Thought there has revelation’s sun-bright eyes;
696   The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,
697   Enters Truth’s inmost cabin of privacy
698   And tears away the veil from God and life.

10.4–10

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

699. Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse,
700. The cosmic empire of the Overmind,
701. Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity,
702. Too vast for the experience of man’s soul:
703. All here gathers beneath one golden sky:
...
711. There is the Godhead’s universal gaze
712. And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:
...
716. In her glorious kingdom of eternal light
717. All-ruler, ruled by none, the Truth supreme,
718. Omnipotent, omniscient and alone,
719. In a golden country keeps her measureless house;
...
727. Transcending Time’s hours, transcending Timelessness,
728. The Mighty Mother sits in lucent calm
729. And holds the eternal Child upon her knees
730. Attending the day when he shall speak to Fate.
...
747. There in a world of everlasting Light,
748. In the realms of the immortal Supermind
...
800. O Death, if thou couldst touch the Truth supreme
801. Thou wouldst grow suddenly wise and cease to be.
...
806. Then Death the last time answered Savitri:
...
830. O human claimant to immortality,
831. Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit’s force,
832. Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.
833. Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,
834. Show me her face that I may worship her;
835. Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death,
836. An imperishable Force touching brute things
837. Transform earth’s death into immortal life.
...
842. And Savitri looked on Death and answered not.
...
846. A mighty transformation came on her.
...
857. A curve of the calm hauteur of far heaven
858. Descending into earth’s humility,
859. Her forehead’s span vaulted the Omniscient’s gaze,
860. Her eyes were two stars that watched the universe.
861. The Power that from her being’s summit reigned,
862. The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,
863. Came down and held the centre in her brow
...
871. It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,
...
877. It glided into the lotus of her heart
...
879. It poured into her navel’s lotus depth,
...
883. Broke into the cave where coiled World-Energy sleeps
884. And smote the thousand-hooded serpent Force
885. That blazing towered and clasped the World-Self above,
...
888. Thus changed she waited for the Word to speak.
889. Eternity looked into the eyes of Death
890. And Darkness saw God’s living Reality.
891. Then a Voice was heard that seemed the stillness’ self
...
894. “I hail thee, almighty and victorious Death,
895. Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite.
...
905. Thou art my shadow and my instrument.
...
920. Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask:
921. Release the soul of the world called Satyavan
...
927. She spoke; Death unconvinced resisted still,
...
940. A pressure of intolerable force
941. Weighed on his unbowed head and stubborn breast;
942. Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts,
943. Light was a luminous torture in his heart,
944. Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves;
945. His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze.
...
956. He called to his strength, but it refused his call.
957. His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.
...
962. Afar he fled shunning her dreaded touch
963. And refuge took in the retreating Night.
964. In the dream twilight of that symbol world
965. The dire universal Shadow disappeared
966. Vanishing into the Void from which it came.
967. As if deprived of its original cause,
968. The twilight realm passed fading from their souls,
969. And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.
970. But neither stirred: between those figures rose
971. A mute invisible and translucent wall.
972. In the long blank moment’s pause nothing could move:
973. All waited on the unknown inscrutable Will.

Book Eleven
The Book of Everlasting Day

11.1. The Eternal Day: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation

Íèæå ðàçìåùåíû äâå ðàçëè÷àþùèåñÿ àóäèîçàïèñè îäíîãî è òîãî æå ôðàãìåíòà òåêñòà (ñòðîêè 898...1123). Ýòîò ôðàãìåíò âûäåëåí çåë¸íûì öâåòîì â ïåðâîé àóäèîçàïèñè (11.1-1). Îáðàòèòå âíèìàíèå íà òî, ÷òî ïîëíûé òåêñò ôðàãìåíòà Ìàòü çà÷èòûâàåò òîëüêî âî âòîðîé çàïèñè (11.1-2), òîãäà êàê ïåðâàÿ àóäèîçàïèñü ñîäåðæèò òîëüêî îòäåëüíûå åãî ôðàãìåíòû. (Çàïèñè, ÿâíî, ðàçíûå, ïîñêîëüêó ðàçëè÷àþòñÿ íå òîëüêî òåêñòîì, íî è äèêöèåé.).

11.1–1

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

Îòðûâêè, âûäåëåííûå çåëåíûì öâåòîì, ïîâòîðÿþòñÿ â ñëåäóþùåé àóäèîçàïèñè ïîëíîñòüþ (áåç ïðîïóñêîâ ìåæäó ñòðîêàìè)

001. A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy’s skies
002. On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection’s home,
...
005. God’s everlasting day surrounded her,
006. Domains appeared of sempiternal light
007. Invading all Nature with the Absolute’s joy.
...
046. Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven
047. The seven immortal earths were seen, sublime:
048. Homes of the blest released from death and sleep
049. Where grief can never come nor any pang
...
067. Eternal mountains ridge on gleaming ridge
068. Whose lines were graved as on a sapphire plate
069. And etched the borders of heaven’s lustrous noon
070. Climbed like piled temple stairs and from their heads
071. Of topless meditation heard below
072. The approach of a blue pilgrim multitude
073. And listened to a great arriving voice
074. Of the wide travel hymn of timeless seas.
...
095. In cities cut like gems of conscious stone
096. And wonderful pastures and on gleaming coasts
097. Bright forms were seen, eternity’s luminous tribes.
098. Above her rhythming godheads whirled the spheres,
099. Rapt mobile fixities here blindly sought
100. By the huge erring orbits of our stars.
...
116. Immortal harmonies filled her listening ear;
117. A great spontaneous utterance of the heights
118. On Titan wings of rhythmic grandeur borne
119. Poured from some deep spiritual heart of sound,
120. Strains trembling with the secrets of the gods.
...
148. In the harmony of an original sight
...
152. She saw all Nature marvellous without fault.
...
186. Endless aspired the climbing of those heavens;
187. Realm upon realm received her soaring view.
...
190. Immune she beheld the strong immortals’ seats
191. Who live for a celestial joy and rule,
192. The middle regions of the unfading Ray.
193. Great forms of deities sat in deathless tiers,
194. Eyes of an unborn gaze towards her leaned
195. Through a transparency of crystal fire.
...
205. The golden-bosomed Apsara goddesses,
...
212. Whirled linked in moonlit revels of the heart.
...
215. Wind-haired Gandharvas chanted to the ear
216. The odes that shape the universal thought,
217. The lines that tear the veil from Deity’s face,
218. The rhythms that bring the sounds of wisdom’s sea.
...
239. Worlds of an infinite reach crowned Nature’s stir.
...
254. Sunlight the soul’s vision and moonlight its dream.
...
257. Into those heights her spirit went floating up
...
286. A secret splendour rose revealed to sight
287. Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.
288. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.
289. The vague infinity was slain whose gloom
290. Had outlined from the terrible unknown
291. The obscure disastrous figure of a god,
...
303. As if the choric calyx of a flower
304. Aerial, visible on music’s waves,
305. A lotus of light-petalled ecstasy
306. Took shape out of the tremulous heart of things.
...
322. Death’s sombre cowl was cast from Nature’s brow;
323. There lightened on her the godhead’s lurking laugh.
324. All grace and glory and all divinity
325. Were here collected in a single form;
326. All worshipped eyes looked through his from one face;
327. He bore all godheads in his grandiose limbs.
...
332. In him the fourfold Being bore its crown
333. That wears the mystery of a nameless Name,
...
338. Spirit and seer and thinker of things seen,
339. Virat, who lights his camp-fires in the suns
340. And the star-entangled ether is his hold,
341. Expressed himself with Matter for his speech:
...
354. In him shadows his form the Golden Child
355. Who in the Sun-capped Vast cradles his birth:
356. Hiranyagarbha, author of thoughts and dreams,
...
365. Armed with the golden speech, the diamond eye,
366. His is the vision and the prophecy:
374. A third spirit stood behind, their hidden cause,
375. A mass of superconscience closed in light,
376. Creator of things in his all-knowing sleep.
...
390. His slumber is an Almightiness in things,
391. Awake, he is the Eternal and Supreme.
392. Above was the brooding bliss of the Infinite,
393. Its omniscient and omnipotent repose,
394. Its immobile silence absolute and alone.
...
434. He seemed the wideness of a boundless sky,
435. He seemed the passion of a sorrowless earth,
436. He seemed the burning of a world-wide sun.
437. Two looked upon each other, Soul saw Soul.
438. Then like an anthem from the heart’s lucent cave
439. A voice soared up whose magic sound could turn
440. The poignant weeping of the earth to sobs
441. Of rapture and her cry to spirit song.
...
522. A smile came rippling out in her wide eyes,
...
607. Then with a smile august as noonday heavens
608. The godhead of the vision wonderful:
609. “How shall earth-nature and man’s nature rise
610. To the celestial levels, yet earth abide?
...
726. O flame, withdraw into thy luminous self.
727. Or else return to thy original might
728. On a seer-summit above thought and world;
...
756. But Savitri answered to the radiant God:
757. “In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss
758. Two spirits saved out of a suffering world;
...
785. Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God;
786. What hides within her breast she must reveal.
...
801. But the god answered to the woman’s heart:
802. “O living power of the incarnate Word,
...
828. Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds
829. To the infinity where no world can be.
...
857. Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self;
858. Choose destiny’s curve and stamp thy will on Time.”
...
872. In an ineffable world she lived fulfilled.
873. An energy of the triune Infinite,
874. In a measureless Reality she dwelt,
...
894. Around her some tremendous spirit lived,
895. Mysterious flame around a melting pearl,
896. And in the phantom of abolished Space
897. There was a voice unheard by ears that cried:
898. “Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again;
...
908. Accept, O music, weariness of thy notes,
909. O stream, wide breaking of thy channel banks.”
...
912. And silently the woman’s heart replied:
913. “Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep
914. Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time
915. For the magnificent soul of man on earth.
...
917. Limitless like ocean round a lonely isle
918. A second time the eternal cry arose:
919. “Wide open are the ineffable gates in front.
...
928. Immeasurably the woman’s nature spoke:
929. “Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,
...
932. A third time swelled the great admonishing call:
933. “I spread abroad the refuge of my wings.
...
938. A sob of things was answer to the voice,
939. And passionately the woman’s heart replied:
940. “Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,
941. To take all things and creatures in their grief
942. And gather them into a mother’s arms.”
943. Solemn and distant like a seraph’s lyre
944. A last great time the warning sound was heard:
945. “I open the wide eye of solitude
946. To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss,
...
954. Then all the woman yearningly replied:
955. “Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,
956. Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,
957. Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,
958. Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.”
959. Then after silence a still blissful cry
...
965. “O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
966. Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
967. My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:
968. All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.
...
990. Now will I do in thee my marvellous works.
...
999. O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
1000. And bring down God into the lives of men;
...
1029. Summing in thy single soul my mystic world
1030. I will possess in thee my universe,
1031. The universe find all I am in thee.
...
1112. Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows:
1113. This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.
1114. For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
1115. O lasso of my rapture’s widening noose,
1116. Become my cord of universal love.

...
1124. “Descend to life with him thy heart desires.
1125. O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri,
1126. I sent you forth of old beneath the stars,
1127. A dual power of God in an ignorant world,
1128. In a hedged creation shut from limitless self,
1129. Bringing down God to the insentient globe,
1130. Lifting earth-beings to immortality.
...
1196. There is an infinite truth, an absolute power.
1197. The Spirit’s mightiness shall cast off its mask;
1198. Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world’s course:
1199. It shall be seen in its own veilless beams,
1200. A star rising from the Inconscient’s night,
1201. A sun climbing to Supernature’s peak.
...
1277. All then shall change, a magic order come
1278. Overtopping this mechanical universe.
1279. A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world.
1280. On Nature’s luminous tops, on the Spirit’s ground,
1281. The superman shall reign as king of life,
...
1344. But first high Truth must set her feet on earth
1345. And man aspire to the Eternal’s light
1346. And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch
1347. And all his life obey an inner Force.
1348. This too shall be; for a new life shall come,
...
1428. Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
1429. The Spirit shall take up the human play,
1430. This earthly life become the life divine.”
1431. The measure of that subtle music ceased.
1432. Down with a hurried swimming floating lapse
1433. Through unseen worlds and bottomless spaces forced
1434. Sank like a star the soul of Savitri.
...
1441. Pursuing her in her fall, implacably sweet,
1442. A face was over her which seemed a youth’s,
1443. Symbol of all the beauty eyes see not,
1444. Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue
1445. Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing smile
1446. Insatiably attracted to delight,
1447. Voluptuous to the embraces of her soul.
1448. Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same,
1449. It grew a woman’s dark and beautiful
1450. Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds,
1451. A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
1452. Turbulent in will and terrible in love.
1453. Eyes in which Nature’s blind ecstatic life
1454. Sprang from some spirit’s passionate content,
1455. Missioned her to the whirling dance of earth.
...
1461. She kept within her strong embosoming soul
1462. Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring
1463. The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her
1464. Inextricably in that mighty lapse.
1465. Invisible heavens in a thronging flight
1466. Soared past her as she fell. Then all the blind
1467. And near attraction of the earth compelled
1468. Fearful rapidities of downward bliss.
...
1477. Then from a timeless plane that watches Time,
1478. A Spirit gazed out upon destiny,
...
1481. The prophet moment covered limitless Space
1482. And cast into the heart of hurrying Time
1483. A diamond light of the Eternal’s peace,
1484. A crimson seed of God’s felicity;
1485. A glance from the gaze fell of undying Love.

11.1–2

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

898   “Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again;
899   For now from my highest being looks at thee
900   The nameless formless peace where all things rest.
901   In a happy vast sublime cessation know,-
902   An immense extinction in eternity,
903   A point that disappears in the infinite,-
904   Felicity of the extinguished flame,
905   Last sinking of a wave in a boundless sea,
906   End of the trouble of thy wandering thoughts,
907   Close of the journeying of thy pilgrim soul.
908   Accept, O music, weariness of thy notes,
909   O stream, wide breaking of thy channel banks.”
910   The moments fell into eternity.
911   But someone yearned within a bosom unknown
912   And silently the woman’s heart replied:
913   “Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep
914   Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time
915   For the magnificent soul of man on earth.
916   Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy.”
917   Limitless like ocean round a lonely isle
918   A second time the eternal cry arose:
919   “Wide open are the ineffable gates in front.
920   My spirit leans down to break the knot of earth,
921   Amorous of oneness without thought or sign
922   To cast down wall and fence, to strip heaven bare,
923   See with the large eye of infinity,
924   Unweave the stars and into silence pass.”
925   In an immense and world-destroying pause
926   She heard a million creatures cry to her.
927   Through the tremendous stillness of her thoughts
928   Immeasurably the woman’s nature spoke:
929   “Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,
930   My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls.”
931   Mightily retreating like a sea in ebb
932   A third time swelled the great admonishing call:
933   “I spread abroad the refuge of my wings.
934   Out of its incommunicable deeps
935   My power looks forth of mightiest splendour, stilled
936   Into its majesty of sleep, withdrawn
937   Above the dreadful whirlings of the world.”
938   A sob of things was answer to the voice,
939   And passionately the woman’s heart replied:
940   “Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,
941   To take all things and creatures in their grief
942   And gather them into a mother’s arms.”
943   Solemn and distant like a seraph’s lyre
944   A last great time the warning sound was heard:
945   “I open the wide eye of solitude
946   To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss,
947   Where in a pure and exquisite hush it lies
948   Motionless in its slumber of ecstasy,
949   Resting from the sweet madness of the dance
950   Out of whose beat the throb of hearts was born.”
951   Breaking the Silence with appeal and cry
952   A hymn of adoration tireless climbed,
953   A music beat of winged uniting souls,
954   Then all the woman yearningly replied:
955   “Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,
956   Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,
957   Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,
958   Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.”
959   Then after silence a still blissful cry
960   Began, such as arose from the Infinite
961   When the first whisperings of a strange delight
962   Imagined in its deep the joy to seek,
963   The passion to discover and to touch,
964   The enamoured laugh which rhymed the chanting worlds:
965   “O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
966   Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
967   My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:
968   All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.
969   All shall be written out in destiny’s book
970   By my trustee of thought and plan and act,
971   The executor of my will, eternal Time.
972   But since thou hast refused my maimless Calm
973   And turned from my termless peace in which is expunged
974   The visage of Space and the shape of Time is lost,
975   And from happy extinction of thy separate self
976   In my uncompanioned lone eternity,-
977   For not for thee the nameless worldless Nought,
978   Annihilation of thy living soul
979   And the end of thought and hope and life and love
980   In the blank measureless Unknowable,-
        Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,
981   I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,
982   I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,
983   I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.
984   Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,
985   Because thou hast chosen to share earth’s struggle and fate
986   And leaned in pity over earth-bound men
987   And turned aside to help and yearned to save,
988   I bind by thy heart’s passion thy heart to mine
989   And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.
990   Now will I do in thee my marvellous works.
991   I will fasten thy nature with my cords of strength,
992   Subdue to my delight thy spirit’s limbs
993   And make thee a vivid knot of all my bliss
994   And build in thee my proud and crystal home.
995   Thy days shall be my shafts of power and light,
996   Thy nights my starry mysteries of joy
997   And all my clouds lie tangled in thy hair
998   And all my springtides marry in thy mouth.
999   O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
1000   And bring down God into the lives of men;
1001   Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
1002   My garden of life to plant a seed divine.
1003   When all thy work in human time is done
1004   The mind of earth shall be a home of light,
1005   The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
1006   The body of earth a tabernacle of God.
1007   Awakened from the mortal’s ignorance
1008   Men shall be lit with the Eternal’s ray
1009   And the glory of my sun-lift in their thoughts
1010   And feel in their hearts the sweetness of my love
1011   And in their acts my Power’s miraculous drive.
1012   My will shall be the meaning of their days;
1013   Living for me, by me, in me they shall live.
1014   In the heart of my creation’s mystery
1015   I will enact the drama of thy soul,
1016   Inscribe the long romance of Thee and Me.
1017   I will pursue thee across the centuries;
1018   Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,
1019   Naked of ignorance’ protecting veil
1020   And without covert from my radiant gods.
1021   No shape shall screen thee from my divine desire,
1022   Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.
1023   In the nudity of thy discovered self,
1024   In a bare identity with all that is,
1025   Disrobed of thy covering of humanity,
1026   Divested of the dense veil of human thought,
1027   Made one with every mind and body and heart,
1028   Made one with all Nature and with Self and God,
1029   Summing in thy single soul my mystic world
1030   I will possess in thee my universe,
1031   The universe find all I am in thee.
1032   Thou shalt bear all things that all things may change,
1033   Thou shalt fill all with my splendour and my bliss,
1034   Thou shalt meet all with thy transmuting soul.
1035   Assailed by my infinitudes above,
1036   And quivering in immensities below,
1037   Pursued by me through my mind’s wall-less vast,
1038   Oceanic with the surges of my life,
1039   A swimmer lost between two leaping seas
1040   By my outer pains and inner sweetnesses
1041   Finding my joy in my opposite mysteries
1042   Thou shalt respond to me from every nerve.
1043   A vision shall compel thy coursing breath,
1044   Thy heart shall drive thee on the wheel of works,
1045   Thy mind shall urge thee through the flames of thought,
1046   To meet me in the abyss and on the heights,
1047   To feel me in the tempest and the calm,
1048   And love me in the noble and the vile,
1049   In beautiful things and terrible desire.
1050   The pains of hell shall be to thee my kiss,
1051   The flowers of heaven persuade thee with my touch.
1052   My fiercest masks shall my attractions bring.
1053   Music shall find thee in the voice of swords,
1054   Beauty pursue thee through the core of flame.
1055   Thou shalt know me in the rolling of the spheres
1056   And cross me in the atoms of the whirl.
1057   The wheeling forces of my universe
1058   Shall cry to thee the summons of my name.
1059   Delight shall drop down from my nectarous moon,
1060   My fragrance seize thee in the jasmine’s snare,
1061   My eye shall look upon thee from the sun.
1062   Mirror of Nature’s secret spirit made,
1063   Thou shalt reflect my hidden heart of joy,
1064   Thou shalt drink down my sweetness unalloyed
1065   In my pure lotus-cup of starry brim.
1066   My dreadful hands laid on thy bosom shall force
1067   Thy being bathed in fiercest longing’s streams.
1068   Thou shalt discover the one and quivering note,
1069   And cry, the harp of all my melodies,
1070   And roll, my foaming wave in seas of love.
1071   Even my disasters’ clutch shall be to thee
1072   The ordeal of my rapture’s contrary shape:
1073   In pain’s self shall smile on thee my secret face:
1074   Thou shalt bear my ruthless beauty unabridged
1075   Amid the world’s intolerable wrongs,
1076   Trampled by the violent misdeeds of Time
1077   Cry out to the ecstasy of my rapture’s touch.
1078   All beings shall be to thy life my emissaries;
1079   Drawn to me on the bosom of thy friend,
1080   Compelled to meet me in thy enemy’s eyes,
1081   My creatures shall demand me from thy heart.
1082   Thou shalt not shrink from any brother soul.
1083   Thou shalt be attracted helplessly to all.
1084   Men seeing thee shall feel my hands of joy,
1085   In sorrow’s pangs feel steps of the world’s delight,
1086   Their life experience its tumultuous shock
1087   In the mutual craving of two opposites.
1088   Hearts touched by thy love shall answer to my call,
1089   Discover the ancient music of the spheres
1090   In the revealing accents of thy voice
1091   And nearer draw to me because thou art:
1092   Enamoured of thy spirit’s loveliness
1093   They shall embrace my body in thy soul,
1094   Hear in thy life the beauty of my laugh,
1095   Know the thrilled bliss with which I made the worlds.
1096   All that thou hast, shall be for others’ bliss,
1097   All that thou art, shall to my hands belong.
1098   I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
1099   I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
1100   I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
1101   I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.
1102   And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy,
1103   And when thou liv’st one spirit with all things,
1104   Then will I spare thee not my living fires,
1105   But make thee a channel for my timeless force.
1106   My hidden presence led thee unknowing on
1107   From thy beginning in earth’s voiceless bosom
1108   Through life and pain and time and will and death,
1109   Through outer shocks and inner silences
1110   Along the mystic roads of Space and Time
1111   To the experience which all Nature hides.
1112   Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows:
1113   This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.
1114   For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
1115   O lasso of my rapture’s widening noose,
1116   Become my cord of universal love.
1117   The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight
1118   Of creation’s oneness sweet and fathomless,
1119   Compelled to embrace my myriad unities
1120   And all my endless forms and divine souls.
1121   O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;
1122   O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
1123.   Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.

Book Twelve
Epilogue

The Return to Earth

12–1

   ýòà çàïèñü íå âõîäèò â çàïèñè ñ ìóçûêîé   

 

001. Out of abysmal trance her spirit woke.
002. Lain on the earth-mother’s calm inconscient breast
003. She saw the green-clad branches lean above
004. Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life,
005. And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy
006. Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call.
...
020. The immense remoteness of her trance had passed;
021. Human she was once more, earth’s Savitri,
022. Yet felt in her illimitable change.
...
058. But soon she leaned down over her loved to call
059. His mind back to her with her travelling touch
060. On his closed eyelids; settled was her still look
061. Of strong delight, not yearning now, but large
062. With limitless joy or sovereign last content,
063. Pure, passionate with the passion of the gods.
...
069. Then sighing to her touch the soft-winged sleep
070. Rose hovering from his flowerlike lids and flew
071. Murmurous away. Awake, he found her eyes
...
077. He murmured with hesitating lips her name,
078. And vaguely recollecting wonder cried,
079. “Whence hast thou brought me captive back, love-chained,
...
088. Where now has passed that formidable Shape
089. Which rose against us, the Spirit of the Void,
090. Claiming the world for Death and Nothingness,
091. Denying God and soul? Or was all a dream
092. Or a vision seen in a spiritual sleep,
...
101. But she replied, “Our parting was the dream;
102. We are together, we live, O Satyavan.
103. Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged
104. Our home, this forest with its thousand cries
105. And the whisper of the wind among the leaves
106. And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,
...
119. But he with a new wonder in his heart
120. And a new flame of worship in his eyes:
121. “What high change is in thee, O Savitri? Bright
122. Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure,
123. Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts
124. Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine.
...
131. But now thou seemst almost too high and great
132. For mortal worship; Time lies below thy feet
133. And the whole world seems only a part of thee,
...
148. My human earth will still demand thy bliss.
149. Make still my life through thee a song of joy
150. And all my silence wide and deep with thee.”
...
155. “All now is changed, yet all is still the same.
...
167. Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur
168. Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge;
169. I am the Madran, I am Savitri.
...
199. Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.
200. For not for ourselves alone our spirits came
201. Out of the veil of the Unmanifest,
...
205. Two fires that burn towards that parent Sun,
206. Two rays that travel to the original Light.
207. To lead man’s soul towards truth and God we are born,
208. To draw the chequered scheme of mortal life
209. Into some semblance of the Immortal’s plan,
...
219. Then hand in hand they left that solemn place
220. Full now of mute unusual memories,
221. To the green distance of their sylvan home
222. Returning slowly through the forest’s heart.
...
242. Topped by a flaring multitude of lights
243. A great resplendent company arrived.
...
253. In front King Dyumatsena walked, no more
254. Blind, faltering-limbed, but his far-questing eyes
255. Restored to all their confidence in light
256. Took seeingly this imaged outer world;
...
258. By him that queen and mother’s anxious face
259. Came changed from its habitual burdened look
...
272. And the swift parents hurrying to their child,-
273. Their cause of life now who had given him breath,-
274. Possessed him with their arms. Then tenderly
275. Cried Dyumatsena chiding Satyavan:
276. “The fortunate gods have looked on me today,
277. A kingdom seeking came and heaven’s rays.
278. But where wast thou? Thou hast tormented gladness
279. With fear’s dull shadow, O my child, my life.
...
284. Not like thyself was this done, Savitri,
285. Who ledst not back thy husband to our arms,
...
289. But Satyavan replied with smiling lips,
290. “Lay all on her; she is the cause of all.
291. With her enchantments she has twined me round.
292. Behold, at noon leaving this house of clay
293. I wandered in far-off eternities,
294. Yet still, a captive in her golden hands,
295. I tread your little hillock called green earth
...
309. Then one spoke there who seemed a priest and sage:
310. “O woman soul, what light, what power revealed,
311. Working the rapid marvels of this day,
312. Opens for us by thee a happier age?”
313. Her lashes fluttering upwards gathered in
314. To a vision which had scanned immortal things,
...
318. Then falling veiled the light. Low she replied,
319. “Awakened to the meaning of my heart
320. That to feel love and oneness is to live
321. And this the magic of our golden change,
322. Is all the truth I know or seek, O sage.”
323. Wondering at her and her too luminous words
324. Westward they turned in the fast-gathering night.
...
333. Drawn by white manes upon a high-roofed car
334. In flare of the unsteady torches went
335. With linked hands Satyavan and Savitri,
336. Hearing a marriage march and nuptial hymn,
337. Where waited them the many-voiced human world.
338. Numberless the stars swam on their shadowy field
339. Describing in the gloom the ways of light.
340. Then while they skirted yet the southward verge,
341. Lost in the halo of her musing brows
342. Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
343. In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign.
344. She brooded through her stillness on a thought
345. Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,
346. And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.

 

Âòîðàÿ ÷àñòü ñîäåðæèò 30 àóäèîçàïèñåé, êîòîðûå îòñóòñòâóþò â ôàéëàõ ñ ìóçûêîé Ñóíèëà. Ïðåäñòàâëåííûå íèæå ññûëêè ê ýòèì àóäèîçàïèñÿì ïðîíóìåðîâàíû ñëåäóþùèì îáðàçîì: ¹ êíèãè, ¹ ïåñíè, ¹ ñòðîêè òåêñòà:

01.01.078. All can be done if the god-touch is there...

01.01.109. On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood...

01.01.135. All grew a consecration and a rite...

01.01.171. The excess of beauty natural to god-kind...

01.01.211. Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears...

01.02.094. Around her were the austere sky-pointing hills...

01.02.134. All in her pointed to a nobler kind...

01.02.200. Almost they saw who lived within her light...

01.02.263. Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law...

01.03.104. A Presence wrought behind the ambiguous screen...

01.03.306. The kings of evil and the kings of good...

01.03.544. Lightnings of glory after glory burned...

01.03.601. A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose...

01.04.065. In moments when the inner lamps are lit...

01.04.280. Only the Immortals on their deathless heights...

01.04.568. Here on the earth where we must fill our parts...

01.04.659. His consciousness is a babe upon her knees...

01.04.843. This is the sailor on the flow of Time...

01.04.900. He is a spirit in an unfinished world...

02.04.202. As shines a solitary witness star...

02.06.559. Armed with a magical and haunted bow...

02.11.296. Above stood ranked a subtle archangel race...

04.02.057. Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven...

04.04.281. But morn broke in reminding her of her quest...

05.03.408. Then down the narrow path where their lives had met...

06.01.084. There welcomed him the sage and thoughtful king...

10.04.699. Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse...

11.01.001. A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy’s skies...

11.01.898 “Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again

12.01.001. Out of abysmal trance her spirit woke...

in English

in French