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 co

  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 constancy of light Sheltered

  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, Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams

  Canto Two   The Parable of the Search for the Soul   AS IN the vigilance of the sleepless night Through the slow heavy-footed silent hours, Repressing in her bosom its load of grief, She sat staring at the dumb tread of Time And the approach of ever-nearing Fate, A summons from her being's summit came, A sound, a call that broke the seals of Night. Above her brows where will and knowledge meet A mighty Voice invaded mortal space. It seemed to come from inaccessible heights And yet was intimate with all the world And knew the meaning of the steps of Time And saw eternal destiny's changeless scene Filling the far prospe

  BOOK SEVEN   The Book of Yoga   Canto One   The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain   FATE followed her foreseen immutable road. Man's hopes and longings build the journeying wheels That bear the body of his destiny And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal. His fate within him shapes his acts and rules; Its face and form already are born in him, Its parentage is in his secret soul: Here Matter seems to mould the body's life And the soul follows where its nature drives. Nature and Fate compel his free-will's choice. Bu

  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 thoughts 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 silent 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 the spirit's powers:

  PART THREE   BOOKS IX ­ XII     BOOK NINE   The Book of Eternal Night   Canto One   Towards the Black Void   SO WAS she left alone in the huge wood, Surrounded by a dim unthinking world, Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast. In her vast silent spirit motionless She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts, Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain: She rose not yet to face the dreadful god. Over the body she loved her soul leaned out In a great stillness without stir or voice, As if her mind had died with Satyavan. But still the

  Canto Four   The Quest   THE WORLD-WAYS opened before Savitri. At first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes Peopled her mind and kept her body's gaze. But as she moved across the changing earth A deeper consciousness welled up in her: A citizen of many scenes and climes, Each soil and country it had made its home; It took all clans and peoples for her own, Till the whole destiny of mankind was hers. These unfamiliar spaces on her way Were known and neighbours to a sense within, Landscapes recurred like lost forgotten fields, Cities and rivers and plains her vision claimed Like slow-recurring memories in front,

'Savitri' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 10   VOLUMES 33 and 34 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Savitri a Legend and a Symbol   Publisher's Note   The writing of Savitri extended over much of the later part of Sri Aurobindo's life. The earliest known manuscript is dated 1916. The original narrative

  BOOK TWELVE   Epilogue   Epilogue   The Return to Earth   OUT OF abysmal trance her spirit woke. Lain on the earth-mother's calm inconscient breast She saw the green-clad branches lean above Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life, And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call. Into the magic secrecy of the woods Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves, In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace. She pressed the living body of Satyavan: On her body's word