CANTO X THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE LITTLE MIND Aswapathy had to overpass the higher vital world as he had to reach the very Highest "In whom the world arid self grow true and one". The human journey upward cannot cease till that is reached. So long as the human being remains satisfied within the limits of its vital desires and their satisfaction, so long as "This creature hugs his limits to feel safe", till then he cannot aspire to realise the spiritual Self, "It could not house the wideness of a soul Which needed all infinity for its home." Aswapathy saw before him a road stretching to timelessness, disappearing into a sky, lighted wit

I INTRODUCTION I IN approaching Sāvitrī as a poem we must take note of the — possible difficulty likely to be encountered by foreigners who are not accustomed to certain ideas of Indian culture. It is natural that having a different background of culture they would find it difficult to enter into the spirit of a poem which has been called "a legend and a symbol".¹ In fact, since Dr. J. H. Cousins' book New Ways in English Literature and even before it, there had already begun to collect a considerable body of literature, including poetry, written in English by Indians. For some time it was called "Indo-English literature" but since the popularity and the great trium

III TRENDS IN MODERN ENGLISH POETRY So far as poetical creation is concerned, the present is a period of transition, that is to say, there are many widely separate attempts, some fine and powerful beginnings but no large consummation, no representative work, no dominating figure. But it is a period full of hundreds of influences, many-motived, and therefore naturally rich in interesting and fruitful experiments. So far as the output of the modem poetry is concerned the new age is not yet. It is with Sāvitrī that the new age may be said to have arrived. Among the precursors of this new age may be counted Whitman, Carpenter, Yeats, A. E. Mere

SUMMARY OF BOOK FOUR CANTO ONE THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF THE FLAME The frenzied earth followed the course of her movement "around a Light she must not dare to touch". In this swing of the inconscient earth Life was born and a finite world of thought and action also whirled "across the immobile trance of the Infinite". In the vast silence that ran with her "she communed with the mystic heart in space", "amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars". The earth "moved towards some undisclosed event." "Day after day sped by like coloured spokes" and "the seasons drew in linked significant dance". The alterations of the seasons were like the rhythmic pageant of d

SUMMARY OF BOOK THREE THE BOOK OF THE DIVINE MOTHER CANTO I THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE THE whole experience of life in the world as it is today can give — something. But, it is too little and "cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst." Something seems to be missing which is badly wanted to make life perfect. In the absence of that something all other things acquired by man lose their significance. To Aswapathy came that experience— "The labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind, All knowledge ended in the Unknowable: The effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will". Thus, finding the pursuits of life insipid, he