CANTO SEVEN   THE DESCENT INTO NIGHT   A MIND absolved from life, made calm to know, A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang, The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance, He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause. Away he looked from Nature's visible face And sent his gaze into the viewless Vast, The formidable unknown Infinity, , Asleep behind the endless coil of things, That carries the universe in its timeless breadths And the ripples of its being are our lives. The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,

  BOOK ELEVEN The Book of Everlasting Day CANTO ONE   THE ETERNAL DAY:-THE SOUL'S CHOICE AND  THE SUPREME CONSUMMATION   A MARVELLOUS sun looked down from ecstasy's skies On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection's home, Magical unfoldings of the Eternal's smile Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight. God's everlasting day surrounded her, Domains appeared1 of sempiternal light Invading all Nature with the Absolute's joy. Her body quivered with eternity's touch, Her soul stood close to the founts of the infinite. Infinity's finite fronts she lived in, new For ever to an everlasting sight.

  CANTO TEN   THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE LITTLE MIND   THIS too must now be overpassed and left, As all must be until the Highest is gained In whom the world and self grow true and one: Till that is reached our journeying cannot cease. Always a nameless goal beckons beyond, Always ascends the zigzag of the gods And upward points the spirit's climbing Fire. This breath of hundred-hued felicity And its pure heightened figure of Time's joy, Tossed upon waves of flawless happiness, Hammered into single beats of ecstasy, This fraction of the spirit's integer

  CANTO FIVE   THE YOGA OF THE KING: THE YOGA OF THE SPIRIT'S FREEDOM AND GREATNESS   THIS knowledge first he had of time-born men. Admitted through a curtain of bright mind That hangs between our thought and absolute sight, He found the occult cave, the mystic door Near to the well of vision in the soul, And entered where the Wings of Glory brood In the sunlit space where all is for ever known. Indifferent to doubt and to belief, Avid of the naked real's single shock He shore the cord of mind that ties the earth-heart And cast away the yoke of Matter's law. The body's rules bound not

  PART TWO Books IV - VIII BOOK FOUR The Book of Birth and Quest CANTO ONE   THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF THE FLAME   A MAENAD of the cycles of desire Around a Light she must not dare to touch, Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun. A mind but half-awake in the swing of the void On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out life And bore this finite world of thought and deed Across the immobile trance of the Infinite. A vast immutable silence with her ran: Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel.. She communed with the mys

  CANTO THIRTEEN   IN THE SELF OF MIND   AT last there came a bare indifferent sky Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice, But answered nothing to a million calls; The soul's endless question met with no response. An abrupt conclusion ended eager hopes, A deep cessation in a mighty calm, A finis-line on the last page of thought And a margin and a blank of wordless peace. There paused the climbing hierarchy of worlds. Hs stood on a wide arc of summit Space Alone with an enormous Self of Mind Which held all life in a corner of its vasts. Omnipotent, immobile and aloof, In the world

  CANTO FOUR   THE DREAM TWILIGHT OF THE EARTHLY REAL   THERE came a slope that slowly downward sank; It slipped towards a stumbling grey descent. The dim-heart marvel of the ideal was lost, Its crowding wonder of bright delicate dreams And vague half-limned sublimities she had left: Thought fell towards lower levels; hard and tense It passioned for some crude reality. The twilight floated still but changed its hues And heavily swathed a less delightful dream; It settled in tired masses on the air; Its symbol colours tuned with duller reds And almost seeme

-51a_ sri aurobindo's letters on savitri.htm      LETTERS ON "SAVITRI"   I THERE is a previous draft, the result of the many retouchings of which somebody told you; but in that form it would not have been a "magaum opus" at all. Besides, it would have been a legend and not a symbol. I therefore started recasting the whole thing, only the best passages and lines of the old draft will remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame.   No, I do not work at the poem once a week; I have other things to do. Once a month perhaps, I look at the new form of the first Book and make such changes as inspiration points out to me—so that nothing shall fall below the minimum height which I have fixed f

SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY CENTRE COLLECTION VOL. II

  CANTO TWO   SATYAVAN   ALL she remembered on this day of Fate, The road that hazarded not the solemn depths But turned away to flee to human homes, The wilderness with its mighty monotone, The morning like a lustrous seer above, The passion of the summits lost in heaven, The titan murmur of the endless woods. As if a wicket gate to joy were there Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic sign, Upon the margin of an unknown world Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess; Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs Peered from their secrecy into open space, Boughs whispering to a constan