-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

  CANTO FOUR   THE TRIPLE SOUL-FORCES   HERE from a low and prone and listless ground The passion of the first ascent began; A moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair, A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe. A rugged and ragged soil was her bare seat, Beneath her feet a sharp and wounding stone. A divine pity on the peaks of the world, A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives, She looked out far and saw from inner mind This questionable world of outward things, Of false appearances and plausible shapes, This dubious cosmos stretched in the ignorant Void, The pangs of earth, the toil and

  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

  CANTO SIX   THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER LIFE   AS one who between dim receding walls Towards the far gleam of a tunnel's mouth, Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace And feels approach a breath of wider air, So he escaped from that grey anarchy. Into an ineffectual world he came, A purposeless region of arrested birth Where being from non-being fled and dared To live but had no strength long to abide. Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds And crying

  CANTO FOURTEEN   THE WORLD-SOUL   A COVERT answer to his seeking came. In a far-shimmering background of Mind-Space A glowing mouth was seen, a luminous shaft, A recluse-gate it seemed, musing on joy, A veiled retreat and escape to mystery. Away from the unsatisfied surface world It fled into the bosom of the unknown, A well, a tunnel of the depths of God. It plunged as if a mystic groove of hope Through many layers of formless voiceless self To reach the last profound of the world's heart, And from that heart there surged a wordless call Pleading with some still unpenetrable Mind, Voicing so

  CANTO FIVE   THE FINDING OF THE SOUL   ONWARD she passed seeking the soul's mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night of God. The light was quenched that helps the labouring world, The power that struggles and stumbles in our life; This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts, The striving heart its unavailing hopes. All Knowledge failed and the Idea's forms, And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech, Formless, ineffable, for ever the same. An innocent and holy Ignorance Adored like one who worships formless God The unseen light

  BOOK TWO The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds CANTO ONE   THE WORLD-STAIR   ALONE he moved watched by the infinity Around him and the Unknowable above. All could be seen that shuns the mortal eye, All could be known the mind has never grasped; All could be done no mortal will can dare. A limitless movement filled a limitless peace. In a profound existence beyond earth's, Parent or kin to our ideas and dreams Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul, In a deep oneness of all things that are, The universe of the Unknown arose. A self-creation without end or pause

  BOOK SEVEN The Book of Yoga CANTO ONE   THE JOY OF UNION; THE ORDEAL OF THE FOREKNOWLEDGE OF DEATH AND THE HEART'S GRIEF   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-wi