BOOK THREE   The Book of the Divine Mother   Canto One   The Pursuit of the Unknowable   ALL IS too little that the world can give: Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time And cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst. Although of One these forms of greatness are And by its breath of grace our lives abide, Although more near to us than nearness' self, It is some utter truth of what we are; Hidden by its own works, it seemed far-off, Impenetrable, occult, voiceless, obscure. The Presence was lost by which all things have charm, The Glory lacked of which they are dim signs. The world lived on made

  Canto Three   The Call to the Quest   A MORN that seemed a new creation's front, Bringing a greater sunlight, happier skies, Came burdened with a beauty moved and strange Out of the changeless origin of things. An ancient longing struck again new roots: The air drank deep of unfulfilled desire; The high trees trembled with a wandering wind Like souls that quiver at the approach of joy, And in a bosom of green secrecy For ever of its one love-note untired A lyric coil cried among the leaves. Away from the terrestrial murmur turned Where transient calls and answers mix their flood, King Aswapati listened through th

  Canto Two   The Growth of the Flame   A LAND of mountains and wide sun-beat plains And giant rivers pacing to vast seas, A field of creation and spiritual hush, Silence swallowing life's acts into the deeps, Of thought's transcendent climb and heavenward leap, A brooding world of reverie and trance, Filled with the mightiest works of God and man, Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home, Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame. Over her watched millennial influences And the deep godheads of a grandiose past Looked on her and saw the future's godheads come As

  Canto Three   Satyavan and Savitri   OUT OF the voiceless mystery of the past In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds These spirits met upon the roads of Time. Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves At once aware grew of each other warned By the first call of a delightful voice And a first vision of the destined face. As when being cries to being from its depths Behind the screen of the external sense And strives to find the heart-disclosing word, The passionate speech revealing the soul's need, But the mind's ignorance veils the inner sight, Only a little breaks through our earth-made bounds, So now they

  Canto Four   The Secret Knowledge   ON A height he stood that looked towards greater heights. Our early approaches to the Infinite Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun. What now we see is a shadow of what must come. The earth's uplook to a remote Unknown Is a preface only of the epic climb Of human soul from its flat earthly state To the discovery of a greater self And the far gleam of an eternal Light. This world is a beginning and a base Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams; An unborn Power must build reality. A deathbound littleness is not al

  Canto Eleven   The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind   THERE ceased the limits of the labouring Power. But being and creation cease not there. For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind, It is greater than its earthly instrument: The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space Escapes on every side into some vast That is a passage to infinity. It moves eternal in the spirit's field, A runner towards the far spiritual light, A child and servant of the spirit's force. But mind too falls back from a nameless peak. His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought. For the spirit is eternal and unmade And not

  Canto Four   The Kingdoms of the Little Life   A QUIVERING trepidant uncertain world Born from that dolorous meeting and eclipse Appeared in the emptiness where her feet had trod, A quick obscurity, a seeking stir. There was a writhing of half-conscious force Hardly awakened from the Inconscient's sleep, Tied to an instinct-driven Ignorance, To find itself and find its hold on things. Inheritor of poverty and loss, Assailed by memories that fled when seized, Haunted by a forgotten uplifting hope, It strove with a blindness as of groping hands To fill the aching and disastrous gap Between earth-pain and the bliss f

  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 Caught into a passionate greatness of extremes, This lim

  Canto Six   Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute   A CALM slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens. A routed sullen rearguard of retreat, The last rains had fled murmuring across the woods Or failed, a sibilant whisper mid the leaves, And the great blue enchantment of the sky Recovered the deep rapture of its smile. Its mellow splendour unstressed by storm-licked heats Found room for a luxury of warm mild days, The night's gold treasure of autumnal moons Came floating shipped through ripples of faery air. And Savitri's life was glad, fulfilled like earth's; She had found herself, she knew her being'

  Canto Two   The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain   A SILENCE sealed the irrevocable decree, The word of Fate that fell from heavenly lips Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse Unless heaven's will itself could change its course. Or so it seemed: yet from the silence rose One voice that questioned changeless destiny, A will that strove against the immutable Will. A mother's heart had heard the fateful speech That rang like a sanction to the call of death And came like a chill close to life and hope. Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire. She felt the leaden inevitable hand Invade the secrecy of her gua